Re: Patriarchy: Re: What Matriarchy?

Marty G. Price (mprice@Ra.MsState.Edu)
Sun, 4 Aug 1996 21:19:27 -0500

On Sun, 4 Aug 1996, Stephen Barnard wrote:

[I wrote]
> > Sorry, Bryant, but even in the Western cultural context, you will find
> > interpretations which vary enough from the ones you stated to allow the
> > "social context" interpretation (which in malicious hands becomes "social
> > bias"). For example, Aristotle's explanation for gravity ("things seek
> > their own level") is very different from Newton's. It is possible (&
> > easy --- we're not *that* far divorced from Aristotle's world) to envision
> > a world order in which Aristotle's definition is significant & Newton's is
> > silly, if not meaningless. So, while Aristotle, Newton, and your distant
> > hunters will all watch their step around waterfalls, there will be
> > culturally significant differences in the explanation they give for doing
> > so.
> >
>
> This is such utter, baloney-like hogwash. Aristotle was *wrong* and
> Newton was *right*, at least to a first approximation, until his theory
> of gravity was superceded by Einstein's. Eventually Einstein's Theory
> of General Relativity will probably be superceded (not overthrown) by a
> more complete quantum theory of gravity. And so it goes.
> [snipped your other paragraph]

(**sigh**) What ever happened to the liberal arts education? That wasn't
post-modernism I was talking about, it was introductory philosophy, the
stuff you learn as a lower-division undergraduate. You have just boldly
proclaimed one of the two acknowledged founders of the Western
philosophical tradition "*wrong*". You ever heard the phrase,
"...footnotes to Plato"? Well, they start with Aristotle.

If you do a little study, you can trace that empirical tradition you
naively follow (and I do mean naively) from Aristotle's attempt to
discover and delineate causes through Francis Bacon's work with the
inductive method, through Newton, and etc. to the present.

Blessed Be,
Gale

(who will take this moment to acknowledge that the "footnotes to Plato"
line appears to leave off all the pre-Socratic philosophers. The very
basic histories of philosophy generally start with Thales of Miletus, a
healthy number of years before Plato ever saw the light of Athens.)