[Buddha-l] Views of Information & Knowledge (Culture & Religion)

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Barnaby Thieme schreef:

> Howdy Erik
>
>> This view is very modern, it's based on the logocentric view that the 
>> world is based on eternal selfevident principles.
>
>
> I'm not sure what you mean here. I do not believe in eternal, 
> self-evident principles, and as far as I'm concerned, none of the 
> views I've put forth require that I do. Could you say a little more?
>
Hi Barnaby,

I'm kind of in the middle between two extremes. The one is that everything people come up with is 100% determined by history. A proponent of this view is Heidegger, who insists that philosophy is an event in Western history and that such a thing as Indian or Chinese philosophy is impossible. The other extreme is Platonism or logocentrism: the world is made out of eternal principles (logoi) which are expressed in material beings, things, states and processes and in the minds of people with varying degrees of perfection. If QM is an eternal logos, then it's not surprising that people in different periods in history in different places pick something of it up and express it in the language of their time.
My objection against this view is that every concept has to be understood within it's own context and paradigm. Pythagoras for instance saw in mathematics the expression of the universal harmony, he didn't see it in the form of a calculus, a structure of meaningless relations and algoritms. I think that technology for instance makes a huge difference, it creates extrasensory spaces where laws rule that are unthinkable in daily life and it makes us judge algoritms by there pragmatic in stead of their esthetic qualities. So I think that it is principally impossible for a yogi to come up with something like QM, simply because he does not play the same (language)game as scientists do today.
I think that in daily life many things may be the same in different times and places. Otherwise Buddhism would be obsolete, but I think there are many differences in the area of formal theories. Does this make any sense to you?

Erik


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