Ancient and ArchaeologyÌý permalink
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Monday, 28th January 2008
If the original was conserved with all of its documents, what are the changes that might have been happened, in comparison to what did happen? Think on any thing, and please, keep it on track, efficient, effective, equitable, polite, and make it able to walk on the high wire. And do not hesitate to participate even if your addition is only one word, i.e., it might be the missed diverse that do harmonizes, complements, and empowers the collective entities of the whole image.
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Message 2
Posted by Volgadon (U10843893) on Monday, 28th January 2008
The same changes that occur when transcribing any manuscript, due to age.
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Message 3
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Monday, 28th January 2008
I meant if all of its documents were conserved and translated into different languages.
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Message 4
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 28th January 2008
We cannot begin to estimate the cultural effect of the library's destruction since we simply do not know all the scientific information it contained that was left to be rediscovered later (or has never been). Likewise we cannot estimate how much better off intellectually the human race would have been had it survived, only that such development must surely have been retarded by its destruction. The destruction of literature, such as Sophocles's "other" 116 plays that the library contained, is impossible to measure in terms of loss but so obviously a catastrophe intellectually that it simply amplifies the loss of the deductively reasoned data all the more.
We know from tantalising references what it contained in part, and even those small snippets of information have often proved to be spark enough during enlightened times to pursue lines of reasoning that have advanced knowledge.
Surprisingly, what we don't know is when it was destroyed. It certainly suffered on a few occasions, the most disastrous probably being at the hands of christians in 391AD. But in historical terms it could probably said to have suffered most from its location in an area which switched so radically from political stability and cosmopolitan ideas that had pertained long enough for it to prosper, to a sequence of political and religious upheavals that exposed and exploited its vulnerability.
In that sense its destruction serves as a salient reminder of how fragile knowledge is, and in consequence how tenuous our custodianship of knowledge is as well. The fruits of deductive reasoning which can take millennia to mature, can be obliterated in a moment from something as random and senseless as a spark from a burning ship (as in 48BC) or the uneducated, bigoted and whimsical edict of a fool (as in Theophilus's edict of persecution so bloodthirstily enacted by his nephew Cyril - both of whom of course received sainthoods for their efforts). Science is the negation of ignorance through rational thought, but that is no guarantee of defence against irrationality when the latter - as often is the case - includes the former's destruction as an aim. -
Message 5
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
But there is very strange thing. If such civilization did reach the event of its climax, in terms of knowledge, in the relative term, according to the development scale in their days, why they did not thought about that the documentation of what they did acquired of knowledge might be vulnerable to destruction by any type of catastrophes, either man-made or due to natural disaster. And, why there was always some hidden knowledge, and thus was not secured 100 % due to the lack of transparency between the elite priests and the majority of the public folks, (there might was only one copy in only one place!). It made it an easy subject of lose particularly by the hands of those, whose ideologies are against it. I meant, do you think there were only one copy of each valuable book on earth at that time, and that only copy was kept in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (our case here). Or the destruction did reach all the places wherein similar copes were found, by other invisible anti-hand(s).
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Message 6
Posted by ElizaShaw (U10750867) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
"In that sense its destruction serves as a salient reminder of how fragile knowledge is,"
And the lives of intellectuals as well, as the untimely deaths of Archimedes and Lavoisier remidn us.
I must say, I also thought the Library of Alexandria suffered most destruction at the unintentional but careless hands of Julius Caser as he was defeating your Ptolemy's troops. But maybe Cleo got most of the contents back when she got (either!) JC or MA to go and take the contents of the library at Pergamon for her!
I was always sorry that Sappho's poetry disappeared almost in totality (again, courtesy of the early christians!) -
Message 7
Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
Hi Eliza,
I was always sorry that Sappho's poetry disappeared almost in totalityÌý
Probably some of the most beautiful and influential poetry ever written lost forever. Solon's request to hear a poem sung again "So that I may learn it, then die" barely hints on what a loss to us the disappearance of her poetry actually is.
Cheers,
RF -
Message 8
Posted by ElizaShaw (U10750867) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
"do you think there were only one copy of each valuable book on earth at that time, "
There were for most texts more than one copy, (surely!) but obviously not enough. You would have thought that, although it must be punishingly laborious to hand copy, that because there were so many slaves, it would not have been impractical to have them make lots and lots of copie, and spread them around in a multitude of 'off site backups'! -
Message 9
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
Also, related to the above, in fact, the case of Bibliotheca Alexandrina-BA do not hint only to the destruction of documentation (if we accept for awhile that there were only one copy of each valuable book, and that copy was kept in BA), but also it hints to the issue of ethics, when you deal with the documented knowledge of other societies, and take into consideration that BA did include documents from different places within there domain of world of their days. I am thinking on, if it happened that I found an ancient novel (for example) and no body knows any thing about it, and I was able to translate it; should I republish it under the name of the original author and say I am only the translator, or do not mention the name of the original author at all? I will leave this issue on ethics to you and others who may add here.
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Message 10
Posted by ElizaShaw (U10750867) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
Id' say it's fairly obvious you publish it under the name of whoever you thought wrote it, and say you are merely the translator. Being cynical, I'd say it would sell a lot better if it's marketed as a 'lost ancient work' than a current work!
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Message 11
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
Good points Aboulfotoh, and deserve an answer.
While the contents of the library could be said to represent the zenith of intellectual achievement in the cultures it drew from, it is a little inaccurate to deduce from this that it represented therefore a "climax" in cultural terms. Those who ran the library would not have envisaged that it should so readily decline, and it did take a concerted anti-intellectual phenomenon to destroy it in the end. Whether you ascribe that destruction to an inevitable aspect of civilization's growth in which periods of great achievement are offset by periods of regression or stagnation is a moot point. Personally I think Alexandria's fate involved a little more misfortune than that.
The question of copies is often raised. That they existed is obvious, given how much of the knowledge contained therein did indeed survive. Some works however were not popular in copy, an expensive business requiring enthusiastic patronage, or contained data whose relevance was appreciated only by an elite few at the time.
Added to this is the library's elitist ethos (in which use of the term "priest" is a little misleading, Hossam) with regard to its function - it was not a library in the sense that we understand the term now and the availability of its property for perusal was something that was controlled jealously, making today's "intellectal property" restrictions seem almost blase in their application. The disasters that had befallen it, notably the wholesale destruction of its contents during Caesar's stay there, would have simply raised this protectionism to greater heights. By the time the christians provided the final torches to it, its administrators saw their responsibility as one of preservation of ideas long gone out of fashion and the events that transpired in 391 showed just how right they were. In those crcumstances, and given how long that situation had already prevailed, I would be surprised if there had not already been copies made, and even more surprised if there had not been incidents of systematically organised "book burnings" that had effectively eliminated most of those copies anyway.
The encouraging thing is that even with the original contexts destroyed, so much of the "abhorred" knowledge survived in other forms - verbally transmitted, contained in reference, or seemingly independently produced by others elsewhere. And not to mention of course the thousands of documents whose copies were kept safe by generations of people whose regard for knowledge exceeded whatever religious leanings or bias they adhered to. This might even be said to be the true triumph of Alexandria - that it demonstrated how even the most seemingly catastrophic setback in one culture's intellectual progress is still only a glitch in cvilization's as a whole. -
Message 12
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
The question of ethics you raise is a modern one. We know that in specialised fields, such as mathematics, ready acknowledgement was given by one author to another. We can be sure also that ideas were appropriated and acknowledgement declined. A bit like today really, but people were less hung up about it then, I think.
That the idea expressed was unique in intellectual terms seems to have been the prime criteria for inclusion, given the range of subjects broached by the library's contents. If there was a notion of "ownership" I think it would have been ascribed, especially towards the end, to the curators. Cyril and his lynch mob seemed to think so anyway. -
Message 13
Posted by ElizaShaw (U10750867) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
I would add that an essential requirement for the preseveation of knowledge is a prevailng ideology that is 'time-based' - ie, that assumes that time will continue, that Homo sap will continue, that history will go on accumulating.
One of the distinctive features, surely, of the early Christians is that they did not share that ideology. They were living 'at the end of time', the latter days were about to happen, so what on earth, pray was the point of dusty old books about stuff that was heretical and not true anyway?
In a way, isn't 'history' an invention of western culture, because we do think (pace Christianity!)that history is an ongoing process, and that the future will probably be different from the present (hopefully better!)
But what is the mindset like of those peoples whose culture is largely static, stuch as tribal peoples? I think one of the hardest thing for the modern western mind is to get to grips at all with what it must be like, say, to be an Australian aborigine with sixty-thousand years of sameness....(until the cataclysmic white man arrived). What must it be like to be an early stone age person with tens of thousands of years of statis? -
Message 14
Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
Hi Nordmann,
The question of copies is often raised. That they existed is obvious, given how much of the knowledge contained therein did indeed survive. Some works however were not popular in copy, an expensive business requiring enthusiastic patronage, or contained data whose relevance was appreciated only by an elite few at the time.Ìý
And some of the precious few of these less popular copies were probably "removed" from one library to repopulate lost copies in other libraries (e.g. Marc Antony and his use of Pergamum to replace those lost at Alexandria).
I'd also say that the popularity of epitomes played a huge role in the decline of full copies of works being made.
Cheers,
RF -
Message 15
Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
Hi Nordmann,
The question of ethics you raise is a modern one. We know that in specialised fields, such as mathematics, ready acknowledgement was given by one author to another. We can be sure also that ideas were appropriated and acknowledgement declined. A bit like today really, but people were less hung up about it then, I think.Ìý
With science in the Roman Empire, there was plagiarism of plagiarism of plagiarism, and the acknowledgement would often be to those authors most respected, trusted and well-known to the public, and not necessarily to those whose work had been blatantly ripped off!
By not checking the original source some strange theories and calculations were attributed to previous authors (e.g. the varying figures claiming to be based on Eratosthenes's calculation of the Earth's circumference). Some of the authors who were acknowledged were also more than a little on the mythical side...
Cheers,
RF -
Message 16
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
I see very excellent posts here, I will carefully read them and come back to you, but until then, what is the relation between ideologies and the knowledge of man? For example, does any ideology, that you know, contradict with how man understand specific kind of math and lead to the destruction of all of its written documents? I know something about interpreting math in arts, but not the math itself. You may think also on the relation between such ideology and economics.
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Message 17
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
The concept of plagiarism was coined first by Martial (of all people!) when he adapted the word for "snare" to construct a word for a "literary thief". Given that he was a past master at appropriating rustic ditties and sayings (often very crude) and dressing them up as novelty poems that found favour amongst Rome's elite (who thought them his own invention), then it is no wonder that the term was still not widely used in its modern sense until - well - until modern times (16th century). You might well say that up until the invention of printing, plagiarism was an inevitable by-product of the copying process, and since copying sponsored by rich and often agenda-driven patrons was the ONLY dsseminative tool available, it's a wonder we can ascribe anything to anybody literature-wise from before Caxton, Gutenburg et al.
That we can is testament to the notion of intellectual property as understood by the ancients, in which the ascribing of a thought to a person gave it an import that otherwise lacked. Abstraction was a problem, especially when it came to science, since the context of a theory, theorem or thesis rested as much with the character of its alleged author as its classification scentifically - an area that had as yet to be developed in any complex way.
The role of libraries such as Alexandria was twofold - to preserve that context as much as possible (in which case copying was to be frowned upon often in instances where it might dilute the association of an idea with a particular philosophy, normally characterised by one of its leading proselytizers), and to redefine the import of the ideas preserved according to the values of the day. A good library therefore threw nothing away, and jealously hoarded information in a manner that could be called competitive as other libraries attempted the same.
A library was therefore at once a robust hub in the intellectual network of a stable and civilized culture, and incredibly vulnerable the moment that stability was lost. Its obligation to preserve in a world where dissemination often led to dissolution of ideas made it even more vulnerable still. Alexandria's tragedy was that it succumbed in an era when anti-intellectual thuggery, sponsored by an ascendant christian ideology, exploited its vulnerability to the point of wilful destruction. Another three hundred years and it would have survived into the era of muslim ascendancy in the area which, despite the propaganda circulated in the middle ages by its enemies, took a much more enlightened view of the preservation of scientific knowledge and the protection of ideological content that ran in parallel or counter to its own. -
Message 18
Posted by ElizaShaw (U10750867) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
took a much more enlightened view of the preservation of scientific knowledge and the protection of ideological content that ran in parallel or counter to its own.
**
Presumably because Islam is not an eschatological theology? (I think eschatological means 'end of the world'!) Therefore it has a reason to value the past for what it can contribute to the future (a future that doesn't end in imminent apocolypse!) -
Message 19
Posted by Richie (U1238064) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
Or the destruction did reach all the places wherein similar copes were found, by other invisible anti-hand(s).
Ìý
"Books" were expensive creations, they took long months to transcribe and errors could (and probably did) creep into them. Add to that that there weren't too many people to read them or who could afford to have them in their houses
Mind you I wouldn't mind knowing who these "anti-hands" are, are they "pro-feet"? -
Message 20
Posted by Jim Reuss (U10298645) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
"...what is the relation between ideologies and the knowledge of man? For example, does any ideology, that you know, contradict with how man understand specific kind of math and lead to the destruction of all of its written documents? I know something about interpreting math in arts, but not the math itself. You may think also on the relation between such ideology and economics."
I think that ideologies are the frameworks through which we attribute meaning and significance to, or build around, given pieces of knowledge. Competing ideologies, therefore, destroy the assembled knowledge of rival worldviews in order to secure primacy of place within a culture. The destruction of knowledge is a fairly typical outcome of the competition between idealogies. Witness the destruction of historical, scientific, social texts by the first emperor of China, the defacement (in an effort to expunge official memory of previous rulers)of Egyptian statuary by later Pharaohs, the destruction of the Library mentioned in this thread, Nazi book burnings, or the current efforts of the Bush administration to supress scientific observations regarding global warming. What cannot be destroyed outright will be adapted and assimilated into the dominant ideology (and will subsequently modify that dominant worldview in some way). -
Message 21
Posted by ElizaShaw (U10750867) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
And, of course, the suppression of evolutionary science by (some) fundamentalist christians.
And the supression of comological science in the l6/l7thC by the Papacy, and its suppression of archeological dating systems in the early l9th C (hieroglyphs)
Plus, on an artistic front, those funadmentalist muslims who destroyed the Bhuddist statues.
And the puritans who destroyed the RC/CoE works of religious art.
A depressing catalogue to be sure! -
Message 22
Posted by Jim Reuss (U10298645) on Tuesday, 29th January 2008
As far as mathmatics goes, I do not think math has been changed by a given culture, though different cultures do have different ways to count, depending on their purposes. For instance, my understanding is that Euclid's geometry was the knowledge basis for an ideology/philosophy that assumed mathmatical models,formulae, and relationships could describe natural phenomena. Since the knowledge seems to accurately apply in such practical areas as construction and architecture it was a knowledge base and ideology that could be absorbed almost in its entirety (though we seem to pay less attention to Euclid's overall philosophical intent).
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Message 23
Posted by ElizaShaw (U10750867) on Wednesday, 30th January 2008
I think maths and science can have huge cultural implications - think of the impact that the theory of natural selction or quantum indeterminacy have had on the way we think of ourselves. Both are very 'dark' theories and lead directly to a pessimistic world view that is difficult to counter by anyone who wants to be an idealist.
At a deeper level, whether mathetimatical truth is 'out there' or 'inside our minds' is a very influential decision to make about our place in the universe. -
Message 24
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Wednesday, 30th January 2008
I suspect that, in addition to plagiarism, another process would also have been occurring.
As certain ancient scholars were considered to have a greater knowledge and understanding of the natural world than contemporary ones, would it not have been a temptation to pass off your own work as that of a more influential authority? Isn't there at least a suspicion that happened with Pythagoras? -
Message 25
Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Wednesday, 30th January 2008
Hi Urnie,
I'm pretty sure this must have happened, as I think some of the "pseudo-" authors we often hear about aren't modern attributions. I'm not sure I'd instantly accuse the author, as instinctively I feel their pride and vanity would have been stronger emotions than their greed - especially in the classical world. What I can see are unscrupulous publishers trying to make a quick buck off trusting authors and unsuspecting and gullible punters.
Cheers,
RF -
Message 26
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
Greeting to all:
I appreciate very much all the previous imputes (posts) in this thread, and I am writing the reply to your ideas and view points, but the following came to my mind while I was reading your messages today.
All of us know that libraries are treasures, i.e., the treasures of knowledge, even the libraries inside our houses, our privet ones; that may contain only one of the Encyclopedias of these days, some novels and may be any or all of the ideological/religious books. At the end it means something to us as it includes the things that we like to read, and I may add too the songs or melodies that we like to hear, and the albums of our pictures; and even if it does not inform us about any new thing (we did observe all of its contents many time), but every time it does activate that thing inside all of us, that links past with the present and let us think on our future in harmonious way, and make us feel something that you can describe as you wish.
Who can say, that he did not like his house’s library that spent years and years in adding to it the books and any written recorded, or copied the thing that he was attracted to it the most. And it might be too, the continuity to the privet library of our fathers and mothers and grandfathers, etc, i.e., our inherited family-libraries. Further, we may think too that our home libraries should continue with our sons and daughters after our mortal dies, the same way we did with the libraries of our fathers. Or, I saw some people dedicate their private libraries to the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and I asked my self, can I do the same, if I have something old and its value is like gold; in fact, the answer was too difficult for me, in terms of the trade off between two things, in one hand, giving it to BA meant ensuring their preservation and protection and achieve the plural meaning of the dissemination of the published knowledge, or at least the value of the stories from which these materials got there golden values, but the second is, why I stop the continuity of inheriting my own private library to my son and daughters, even it their interests are different, and in this later case convincing them to do so is some how imaginable.
Another opinion did amaze me. Some time people send books that they never read but kept them in their homes, because it remind them with events in their life, as a gift to some one they never saw. In 1992 I got a gift from a 70 years old Jewish lady, the mother of one of my colleague and my dear friend from the one of the eastern European countries, I never meet her, it is the smallest complete book (Quran) in my private library, 1.7mm by 2.5 mm, she kept it with here from the days of WW2, it was a gift from her first lover, he told her keep it with you it will protect you from the Nazis, and did remind her with her sister that died during that war in the holocaust; she sent to me a verbal message with hem, saying, I kept it all these years until I find some one who I feel releasing my pains when I give it to him. To me that message was not difficult to be understood, because in early 70s when my father returned back from other eastern European county, he showed us pictures of these horrible holocaust building. Two years ago, I thought I should sent it as a gift to Bibliotheca Alexandrina, with a cover letter, includes the complete story of that lady, thus I did ask her son to send me all the of its details, and he did, but I did not, because it reminds me with the endless love between two sisters, and it also hints to that love, of any kind, between peoples has nothing to do with the differences between their ideologies; at the end all of us are human beings.
Would you give your private library to any one? -
Message 27
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
Eliza,
An ancient novel is heritage, and currently, heritage is protected by law, in most countries as far as I know. Thus, I imagine, if one did translate and publish it, the antiquity authority may say he did violate the law and steal a heritage that belongs to the country, and they are the only body who is authorized to translate and publish it. -
Message 28
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
RF,
As you know, transferring the knowledge over the air, via the mobile brains, in terms of poetry songs, was the main mood of education in the early ears. And it remained like this for centuries in many places, until the majority of those who can read and write, said, let use conserve our memory for something else as long as it is there in the books, but they did not think about that books might be lost, and the last mobile brain that contained these files dismantled and evaporated millenniums ago.
What are the unforeseen loses, that might appear in the future, based on changing from one mood of education to the other? i.e., from the paper book to electronic book; yes, we do conserve papers, but I do not know what might be its corresponding loses in the future. Do not worry we have enough Electricity, think about other thing. -
Message 29
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
Re 24: Pythagoras did not write any book.
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Message 30
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
J_reuss
Do you know the nationality of Euclid? Do not say Greek. -
Message 31
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
Re 29.
I never said he did.
I never said he did.
I never said he did.
I never said he did.
I never said he did.
I never said he did.
I never said he did.
I never said he did.
p.s. I never said he did. -
Message 32
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
RE 25: Do not bother your self; do not read these books or papers; and do not put any of them in your private library.
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Message 33
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
Re 31:
I never said he did.
That was the tenth one; you repeated it only nine times, because Pythagoras did like the number 10, and we are in his hall.
May be I miss-understood your message, can you explain it again. -
Message 34
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Thursday, 31st January 2008
It's self-explanatory. Do NOT attack people for what they haven't said. Incidentally, can you now prove your assertion that Pythagoras didn't write any books? How d o you know this? Could they not have existed but not survived? Perhaps the only copy was in Alexandria, and got burned?
By the way -
I DO NOT CLAIM THAT PYTHAGORAS WROTE ANY BOOKS.
You claim, with ZERO supporting evidence that he did not.
I claim that we have no proof either way.
Do you understand the difference between these statements? -
Message 35
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Friday, 1st February 2008
Good question,
Writing any thing was against the Pythagorean ideology; only Philolaus who did not respect the Pythagorean covenant on the number 10, and wrote a book about the Pythagorean ideology.
For more information, at the web see this:
Pythagoras wrote nothing down, .... From this link:
Also, read about Philolaus here.
You can find the story too and other information on the Pythagorean ideology, in any book on the history of science, e.g.:
- Peder, Olaf, Early Physics and Astronomy, A Historical Introduction, Cambridge University press, 1993
- McLeish, John, Numbers: From Ancient Civilizations to the Computer, Flamingo, HarperCollins, London, 1992 -
Message 36
Posted by Jim Reuss (U10298645) on Friday, 1st February 2008
"J_reuss
Do you know the nationality of Euclid? Do not say Greek."
No, I do not know. I do not think that knowledge adds relevance to the discussion. -
Message 37
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Friday, 1st February 2008
The case of Euclid is related to the issue of ethics; if one was asked to translate, retranslate or edit any book, should he mention the name of the original author, or not?
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Message 38
Posted by Jim Reuss (U10298645) on Friday, 1st February 2008
"...what is the relation between ideologies and the knowledge of man? For example, does any ideology, that you know, contradict with how man understand specific kind of math and lead to the destruction of all of its written documents? I know something about interpreting math in arts, but not the math itself. You may think also on the relation between such ideology and economics."
I don't see how Euclid's failure to attribute his sources fits into the question you asked. Whether he created/developed geometry or simply took credit for others' work, your question seems to ask whether the actual mathmatics functioned differently or was changed by the different ideologies that adopted the knowledge base. -
Message 39
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Sunday, 3rd February 2008
If that is your opinion concerning the case of Euclid, why he did not mention them? Do you have any idea?
Ideology and Math, e.g., think on the zero. Please describe it. -
Message 40
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Sunday, 3rd February 2008
The case of Pythagorean is very interesting one, and hints to the opposite case of the core question of this thread; if Philolaus had respected the Pythagorean covenant on the number 10 and did not publish any thing on their knowledge and ideology, the chance of sending this knowledge to the future generation would have been nil, and perhaps the General Relativity of Albert Einstein, that is based on one of the Pythagoras's laws, would have been different. What do you think concerning the action of Philolaus?
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Message 41
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Thursday, 7th February 2008
In these days an email message to a known author, living too far from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, to encourage him to send copies of his great works as a gift to BA, or participate in its international events, is a not a big deal, and did work. I read some where, at the time of the Hellenistic periods, please correct me if I am wrong, that the ships that their end, or one of its, destination(s) is Alexandria must bring on it a book from where it was departed, and give it as a gift to BA at that time. I am not sure if that was obligatory or not, and I am not sure too about if those books were sold in the ancient ears, like these days or not, but the logic imply they might were the same as today. Four years ago I met a young British man, in the train; he was in his way back from Loxur to Cairo; when I took the train from Minia, where the location of my university, I found an empty chair beside him, I seated, and we started our talks about many areas of science, as a general knowledge, and that lasted for 3 hours till we reached Cairo. He was, then, a student in the Faculty of Computer Sciences, and our last subject was antigravity and I found him aware about most of its related subjects; I asked him, how come you did know? He said, he is the son of one of the known British scientist/writer in the field of physics, who wrote many excellent books, I asked him did he get the noble prize? he said not yet but he have got other three international prizes, I said, I like his books, and I have two of them in my private library, and I wonder if he did send copies of his book as a gift to the new BA, he said I do not know, but you can send him an email, and he wrote it for me. A year later, I sent an email to his father, not only to ask him to send his books to BA but also to organize or participate in its conferences, and in 2006, he did participate in the BA conference on Albert Einstein.
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Message 42
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 17th February 2008
Re: Message 11.
Nordmann,
great message indeed. I thank you for that.
Warm regards,
Paul.
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