S///R///W/B Mythless Patterns

[jporter]

> From: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>

> 
> On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Jeremy Osner wrote:
> 
>> Paul Mackin wrote:
>> 
>>> Another thing, it kept alive a lot of the best thought of the ancient
>>> world. Plato, Aristotle, etc--the deciplines which later could be split off
>>> from belief and made to work in the development of modern science
>> 
>> Hate to quibble but Muslim scholars were primarily responsible for preserving
>> the writings of the Greek philosophers -- not much Greek was spoken in the
>> Catholic church during the Middle Ages.
> 
> Absolutely. I was talking about presevation for the West. Christianity's
> first cousin Islam was essential in the chain and got pretty far West
> itself (Spain and all). Didn't intend to slight them.
> P.

The Latin Church did little to preserve and much to hinder any thought,
besides Christianity. Aquinas learned most of his Aristotle from Moors and
Jews. Not to demean the central role of Christianity in providing one basis
for Western Civilization, but Plato, et.al., were almost entirely preserved
by Islam, and to a large extent, by the Jews- who were much less persecuted
within the far more enlightened Islamic Civilization of "The Dark Ages."
Some of the more enlightened Jews were even persecuted by their own Jewish
brethren for a too overt neo-platonism.

The Classics, however, were not the only examples of unorthodox knowledge
transmitted to the west by Islamic Scholars and Jews. There was also an
undercurrent of secret knowledge carried along by, or complementing, the
thrice great orthodoxies of the *revealed* monotheism(s). The cognoscenti,
it seems, lived neither by revelation nor tradition alone, but relied on
other sources, as well, for their inspiration.

This secret sharing of secret knowledge- not without risk- across walls both
physical and spiritual of church, mosque and temple, as the ages, in their
widening gyre, turned slowly to the west, played a fostering role in the
gradual empowerment of secular knowledge. In retrospect, another lingering
*grace note,* this time sacred, announcing the coming of a new hegemony.

jody