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Ancient Science (Babylonian period and prior)


Bartholomew Jones

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20 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

I don't subscribe to modern science.  Here's why: That genuine science began as a branch of ancient philosophy.  Modern science disowns it's ancestry for the sake of modern commercial interests, primarily institutions descending from mass manufactures.

 

So, modern science disowns its ancestry for commercial interests-- and ancient science/philosophy did not?  I think you ought to do some research on ancient societies and ask yourself how the ancient scientists/philosophers had the time to do what they did without needing to work all the time to support themselves.  Think about the role of patrons and rulers.  The patrons and rulers saw an advantage, commercial and/or political, in supporting the activities.  Lets go waaaay back in the pursuit of science and invention.  Had the wheel no commercial value?

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2 hours ago, studiot said:

I think they were better than that.

Inventing fractions is impressive, but cutting things up is more concrete than abstract, imo. But I didn't realize they had a concept of zero, and while "no apples" is an observable phenomenon even in ancient times, it took a while for early societies to represent it in their maths. So yes, perhaps better than I originally implied.

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7 minutes ago, studiot said:

I'll pop open my best bottle of wine. Thank you.

Unfortunately the video didn't work. Maybe later.

I've never underestimated soil. It's gold dust in terms of biology.

Long live soil!

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1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

Inventing fractions is impressive, but cutting things up is more concrete than abstract, imo. But I didn't realize they had a concept of zero, and while "no apples" is an observable phenomenon even in ancient times, it took a while for early societies to represent it in their maths.

"it took a while for early societies to represent it in their maths" as written symbol..

If ancient manuscript translator see nothing, thinks there is nothing. Zero is nothing.. Ancient manuscript author used nothing to indicate zero result..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0#Ancient_Near_East

"Ancient Egyptian numerals were of base 10.[14] They used hieroglyphs for the digits and were not positional. By 1770 BC, the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts. The symbol nfr, meaning beautiful, was also used to indicate the base level in drawings of tombs and pyramids, and distances were measured relative to the base line as being above or below this line.[15]

By the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the Babylonian mathematics had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. By 300 BC, a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. In a tablet unearthed at Kish (dating from about 700 BC), the scribe Bêl-bân-aplu wrote his zeros with three hooks, rather than two slanted wedges.[16]

The Babylonian placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone, nor was it used at the end of a number. Thus numbers like 2 and 120 (2×60), 3 and 180 (3×60), 4 and 240 (4×60) looked the same, because the larger numbers lacked a final sexagesimal placeholder. Only context could differentiate them."

 

Even simple subtraction, sooner or later, ends up with zero result. If somebody can subtract, must understand the meaning of zero..

Edited by Sensei
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21 hours ago, joigus said:

I've been thinking about this too. They had a lot of practical knowledge and "played" with the maths very cleverly, but they didn't have the real drive to relate and understand, the basis for prediction.

They were basically concerned with measuring the land, accounting, and measuring time.

You didn't rethink your statement comprehensively...

How do you know?

 

What will remain of the present civilization for future generations ...?

Nothing.

Because you don't write in stone..

You record data on tapes, diskettes, CD, DVD, pendrive.. after several years they won't be readable..

You release the most valuable newspapers news behind pay-wall.

You make everything for money.

You make everything accessible only by CAPTCHA. Which means automatically scanning bots cannot archive data.

(ordinary user don't know that CAPTCHA often activates when scanning bot tries to archive server data, after a few too quick attempts.. they're starting appearing on normal websites which are accessible to human, with regular rate of access)

If somebody won't pay, company, government, person, won't release details. So, the majority of information, will be lost as soon as you're dead, or sooner.

Somebody after 50-100 years will have doubts you ever existed. You could be just computer program, chatbot, pretending the real human, and writing here. You could be artificial intelligence, making fake news from the past. You will be lucky to end up so.. If you will be unlucky, nobody will ever hear about your existence..

To joigus second (actually n-th) incarnation in 2200 (or 4200) will say the same as you now, I will just copy'n'paste my post from now.. ;)

I will just change a couple bits to fit the modern time.. ;)

Good old copy'n' paste!

What I would do without it.. ;)

 

Edited by Sensei
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Quote

P B Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

 

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2 hours ago, Sensei said:

How do you know?

I don't really know. I suspect it based on what scholars say. Perhaps a good account of it is here:

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/52384/did-the-babylonians-know-the-pythagorean-theorem-before-pythagoras-formulated-it

The lowdown of it is: Apparently the Babylonians (well, the scribes, accountants, etc. what? just a 1% of the population?) got close to the Pythagorean theorem by discovering Pythagorean triplets. They found a funny coincidence: Sometimes for triplets of whole numbers you can arrange triangles so that the long side is, say, 5, and the shorter, perpendicular ones are 3 and 4. And, lo and behold, 52 = 32+42. Wow! it's what they seem to have said.

But you're right. We don't really know. Imagine this analogy for your "selective memory" example (based on the storage method): Some big shot among the scribes actually knew the theorem, but he decided not to tell, keep the secret and look like a genius to everybody else. The only fragment of that knowledge is tablets in which he (and others downstream on the line of culture and knowledge) show only punctuated examples in the form of Pythagorean triplets. That would be the equivalent of computer memory that has not been cached. So you may be right. The suggestion is that they didn't understand how to generalise. But we cannot be sure.

I can only guess that only tablets that were extremely important and official were baked and hardened. But many tablets that were just for students homework were never baked. Many were probably lost. Only those that burnt in the destruction layers survived.

My intuition* tells me that it was the Greeks who took the big leap. I mean. Think about the alphabets. The Phoenicians already had it, but they forgot to include the vowels. The Greeks copied and improved it, by adding vowels and putting them to many other different uses.

*Not just my intuition. It's been claimed by scholars for centuries now. And I think they had a point. The Greeks were the essential communicating vessel between East and West.

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On 12/4/2020 at 1:04 PM, John Cuthber said:

I'm going with "none whatsoever".
Feel free to show that I'm wrong.
 

 

Very non-scientific answer.  I expected something like: for every successive layer a season passes, during which the vivid green moss cyclically decomposes, older layers resembling petrification.  And that during each cycle exchanges between energy from the sun and hardened minerals at greater depths exhibit new mineral formations.  Not bad for a minstrel hehh?

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11 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Ignorance is bliss! 🙄

You call it ignorance.  I call it not worth my time.  Like uhh, aliens, ufo's, saskwatch, ghosts and goblins, etc.

1 hour ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

What's bible code?

If I'm going to read a book as renowned as the Bible I'm going to consider it from the point of view of its authors, not some freakish idea of third parties, which is what bible code sounds like to me.

Edited by Bartholomew Jones
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9 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

Very non-scientific answer. 

Asking you how you rejected the null hypothesis is a quintessentially scientific response.

Did you not understand that?

On 12/4/2020 at 9:15 PM, studiot said:

Tomorrow (Dec 5th) is World Soil Day

Today is Put on Your Own Shoes Day.

Hasn't the same gravitas.

 

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1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

Asking you how you rejected the null hypothesis is a quintessentially scientific response.

Did you not understand that?

Today is Put on Your Own Shoes Day.

Hasn't the same gravitas.

 

The fact is, science that is authentic is rooted in a love (brotherly) of something, that being wisdom; which isn't exhibited here.  Philosophy is the parent.

https://www.google.com/search?q=word+origin+philosophy&oq=word+origin+philosophy&aqs=chrome..69i57.12449j0j9&client=ms-android-americamovil-us-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

Edited by Bartholomew Jones
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33 minutes ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

The fact is, science that is authentic is rooted in a love (brotherly) of something, that being wisdom; which isn't exhibited here. 

That's not a fact.
It's barely an hypothesis.

 

Even if it was true then questioning ideas would still be important.
You put forward an idea
"And breaking off a section, I noted it was stratified to a much higher degree and depth, and it was hardened minerals.  What then are the implications?"
The idea you put forward  was that you noticing something about a broken rock has (implicitly, significant)  implications.

 

Well, prove it...
 

 

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