[Buddha-l] The Shape of Ancient Thought

[Malcolm Dean]

>Re: buddha-l digest, September 5, 2006: Is there any Buddhist influence on
>the early Greeks?
>
>I'd be curious to hear what Buddha-L denizens think of  this text:
>  McEvilley, Thomas, The Shape of Ancient Thought:
>  Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies
>  Allworth Press 2001 ISBN 1-58115-203-5
>- Jon Weaver
>
>By the way, in looking for the book I noted our library has some 18 books
>written by McEvilley. Color me suspicious, but whenever I encounter someone
>who has written 18 books, I think that either the author is a polymath
>genius, or the author writes very superficial books really fast, or the
>author has a team of underpaid graduate students doing most of his research
>for him. From what I have heard, McEvilley falls into the first category
>(which does not preclude his also falling into the other two).
>- Richard P. Hayes

I found the early chapters to present a fascinating list of literary
references by ancient writers to distant places and events. But when I
presented it to a colleague who has published leading research on the
Harappa controversy, he immediately pooh-poohed it.

Readers should be aware of the larger debate which encompasses the
questions of culture and cultural transmission, Cognitive Archaeology,
the transmission of ideas, and memetics (not the same thing). The
general position held by mainstream authorities in these fields is to
reject cultural transmission on lack of evidence, and adopt a theory
of spontaneous arising in discrete locations. If readers are aware of
any hybrid-model hypotheses, I'd appreciate the citation data.

In my view, the two major problems here are academic specialization,
and lack of an Information theory. As long as academia insists on
spitting out specialists who may have excellent competence in a narrow
field but are obviously as ignorant as the rest of us in the remaining
fields, we are doomed to see such debates function mainly as job
security. For example, I've heard world-renowned archaeologists talk
about questions of cultural transmission being resolved perhaps a
century from now. It may be comforting to know that you will retire in
tenured security, having contributed a few outstanding papers to
obscure journals, but this is an attitude from the 19th century.

Most especially, it ignores developments in Complexity Science,
particularly in leading-edge Sociology. Questions such as the spread
of ideas between individuals, the rise of cultures, and transmission
between cultures are being modelled and studied in agent modelling,
anthropology, epidemiology, terrorism studies, and biology.

Few of these developments have spilled back into traditional
archaeology or early literary studies, where they could be used to
point to undiscovered connections, or to test accepted hypotheses. At
least McEvilley has made extensive and strenuous efforts to detail the
accepted evidence and discuss the controversies.

The question folds back into another current topic on Buddha-L, the
nature of culture and religion. If we view systems of morality as
defined in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, namely as norms in
human groups or as "rational" conduct, then it is possible to argue
that there was no connection between areas of the ancient world,
because normative codes and "rational" measures of behavior could
arise locally and repeatedly.

However, if we view ancient and pre-historic religions as, at least in
part, as the embodiment of early Big Science (science projects
undertaken by nations or civilizations), then we might look for
fragments of lawful understanding of the world. (Anthony Aveni pursues
this line of thought regarding mesoamerican astrology, and see de
Santillana and Von Dechend's Hamlet's Mill.)

At least as they are taught to us, the religions of the Mediterranean
region appear to have been mainly concerned with the fickle and
inexplicable wills of deities, how to satisfy and "game" them.
Buddhism stressed a lawful universe, the understanding of which could
lead to Liberation. It is perhaps in this cognitive shift that we can
look for evidence of a connection between ancient India and the
ancient Mediterranean.

Malcolm Dean
Los Angeles CA