59 ideas
| 20678 | The Scientific Revolution was the discovery of our own ignorance [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The great discovery of the Scientific Revolution was that humans do not know the answers to their most important question. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Ignoramus') | |
| A reaction: I think of that revolution as raising the bar in epistemology, but this idea gives a motivation for doing so. Why the discovery then, and not before? |
| 20686 | For millenia people didn't know how to convert one type of energy into another [Harari] |
| Full Idea: For millenia people didn't know how to convert one type of energy into another, …and the only machine capable of performing energy conversion was the body. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 17 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Hence the huge and revolutionary importance of the steam engine and the electricity generator. |
| 16512 | Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Semantical fact is almost always more interesting than transcendental philosophical fiction. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.1 n4) | |
| A reaction: An interesting expression of a more sophisticated recent allegiance to linguistic philosophy. There is still a strong allegiance to semantics as a major branch of philosophy, despite caution (e.g. from Nathan Salmon) about its scope. |
| 17529 | Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: My thesis C says that to specify something or other under which a and b coincide is to specify a concept f which qualifies for this purpose only if it yields a principle of counting for fs. ...I submit that C is false, though a near miss. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 1.1) |
| 17530 | The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: My principle C seems unnecessary ...since it is one thing to see how many fs there are...but another to have a perfectly general method. ...One could answer whether this f-compliant is the same as that one, but there are too many ways to articulate it. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 2.8) | |
| A reaction: His famous example is trying to count the Pope's crown, which is made of crowns. A clearer example might be a rectangular figure divided up into various overlapping rectangles. Individuation is easy, but counting is contextual. |
| 21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
| Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people." | |
| From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
| A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork. |
| 16523 | Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The realist conceptualist may cheerfully admit that the sortal concepts of which we are possessed are the creatures of our interests; …and also that there need be no one way in which we must articulate reality. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: Wiggins calls himself a 'realist conceptualist'. In his terminology, I seem to be an 'anti-conceptualist realist'. The issue concerns aspects of reality that extend beyond our concepts. The 99th d.p. of the mass of the electron. |
| 16524 | Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: What Conceptualism entails is that, although horses and stars are not inventions or artefacts, in order to single out these things we must deploy a conceptual scheme which has been formed in such a way as to make singling them out possible. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't quite see why the 'singling out' role of the concepts is the only one that generates them, or makes them fit for purpose. In general, of course, our conceptual scheme is necessarily a response to our experience of the world. |
| 16526 | Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed…. [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: A Chinese encyclopedia classifies animals as belonging to the Emperor, embalmed, tame, sucking pigs, sirens, fabulous, stray dogs, included in this classification, frenzied, innumerable, drawn with a fine brush, etcetera, or look for afar like flies. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 5.7 n18) | |
| A reaction: [This glorious quotation comes from a story by Borges, first spotted by Foucault] |
| 16492 | Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: A theory of individuation must comprise at least three things: an elucidation of the primitive concept of identity or sameness; what it is to be a substance that persists through change; and what it is for a thinker to single out the same substance. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], Pre 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Metaphysics seems to need a theory of identity, but I am not yet convinced that it also needs a theory of 'individuation'. Never mind, press on and create one, and see how it looks. Aristotle wanted to explain predication too. |
| 16493 | Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Understanding the concepts involved in individuation can only be characterised by reference to observable commerce between things singled out and thinkers who think or find their way around the world precisely by singling them out. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], Pre 1) | |
| A reaction: I take individuation to be relatively uninteresting, because I understand identity independently of how we single things out, but Wiggins's reliance on sortals implies that the very identity of things in the world is knee deep in mental activity. |
| 16496 | Singling out extends back and forward in time [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The singling out of a substance at a time reaches backwards and forwards to time before and after that time. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], Pre 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is an inferred history and persistence conditions. Sounds fine in a stable world. We assume (a priori?) that any object will have a space-time line for its duration. |
| 16495 | The only singling out is singling out 'as' something [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: There could be no singling out tout court unless there could be singling out 'as'. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], Pre 2) | |
| A reaction: I find this claim baffling. Do animals categorise everything they engage with? Are we unable to engage with something if we have not yet categorised it? Surely picking it out is prior to saying that sort of thing it is? |
| 16501 | In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: To say that x falls under f - or that x is an f - is to say what x is (in the sense Aristotle isolated). | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a key claim in Wiggins's main principle. I'm not convinced. He wants one main sortal to do all the work. I don't think Aristotle at all intended the 'nature' of an individual thing to be given by a single sortal under which it falls. |
| 16506 | Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: We can expect that, for every completely determinate continuant, there will be at least one sortal concept that it falls under and that determines a principle of persistence for it. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: I think he has the 'determines' relation the wrong way round! Being a tiger doesn't determine anything about persistence. It is having that nature and those persistence conditions which make it a tiger. And why does he optimistically 'expect' this? |
| 16509 | Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Among the best candidates to play the roles of sortal and substantial predicates are the natural kind words. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: There is always a danger of circularity with this kind of approach. How do we distinguish the genuine natural kinds from the dubious ones? |
| 16514 | Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Ordinary artefacts are individuated, rather indeterminately and arbitrarily, by reference to a parcel of matter so organised as to subserve a certain function. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.3) |
| 16510 | Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Nominal essences are unsatisfactory because they fail either of necessity or of sufficiency for membership of the intended kind, they leave unexplained how sortals can evolve, and there is no room for culture or context in our reference to kinds. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: [a compression of a paragraph] I would have thought that Locke would just say it is tough luck if nominal essences can't do all these things, because that's just the way it is, folks. |
| 16503 | 'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The question 'what is it?' refers to the persistence and lifespan of an entity, and so manifests the identity over time of an entity and its persistence, between persistence and existence, and between its existence and being the kind of thing it is. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The idea that establishing the kind of a thing can do all this work strikes me as false. The lifespan of a 'human' can be between five minutes and a hundred years. Humans have a clear death, but thunderstorms don't. |
| 16499 | A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork' [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: We can say of Hume's church that the present church is the same 'church' as the old parish church but not the same 'building' or the same 'stonework' as the old parish church. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Unconvinced. This seems to make a 'church' into an abstraction, which might even exist in the absence of any building. And it seems to identify a building with its stonework. Wiggins yearns for a neat solution, but it ain't here. |
| 16515 | A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: A thing starts existing only once; and in the case of a clock its proper beginning was at about the time when its maker finished it. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: I love the example that challenges this. Take the clock's parts and use them to make other clocks, then collect them up and reassemble the first clock. If the first clock has persisted through this, you have too many clocks. Wiggins spots some of this. |
| 16517 | Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Dispute might break out between priests who favoured the working ship and antiquarians who preferred the reconstruction. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: This captures the contextual nature of the dispute very succinctly. Wiggins, of course, thinks that sortals will settle the matter. Fat chance. |
| 16497 | Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The principle of Leibniz's Law marks off what is peculiar to identity and differentiates it in a way in which transitivity, symmetry and reflexivity (all shared by 'exact similarity, 'equality in pay', etc.) do not. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 1.2) |
| 16502 | Identity is primitive [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Identity is a primitive notion. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: To be a true primitive it would have to be univocal, but it seems to me that 'identity' comes in degrees. The primitive concept is the minimal end of the degrees, but there are also more substantial notions of identity. |
| 16498 | Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Since any definition is an identity, identity itself cannot be defined. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 1.2 n7) | |
| A reaction: This sounds too good to be true! I can't think of an objection, so, okay, identity cannot possibly be defined. We can give synonyms for it, I suppose. [Wrong, says Rumfitt! Definitions can also be equivalences!] |
| 16521 | A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The famous proof of Barcan Marcus about necessity of identity comes down to simply this: Hesperus is necessarily Hesperus, so if Phosphorus is Hesperus, Phosphorus is necessarily Hesperus. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Since the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus was an a posteriori discovery, this was taken to be the inception of the idea that there are a posteriori necessities. The conclusion seems obvious. One thing is necessarily one thing. |
| 16505 | By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself! [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The full Identity of Indiscernibles excludes the existence in this world of a symmetrical object, which is reduced to half of itself by the principle. If symmetrical about all planes that bisect it, it is precluded altogether from existence. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: A really nice objection. Do the parts even need to be symmetrical? My eyeballs can't be identical to one another, presumably. Electrons already gave the principle big trouble. |
| 16494 | We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The notion of sameness or identity that we are to elucidate is not that of any degree of qualitative similarity but of coincidence as a substance - a notion as primitive as predication. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], Pre 2) | |
| A reaction: This question invites an approach to identity through our descriptions of it, rather than to the thing itself. There is no problem in ontology of two substances being 'the same', because they are just one substance. |
| 16522 | It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It is hard or impossible to conceive of Caesar's not being a man (human). | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: So is it 'hard' or is it 'impossible'? Older generations of philosophers simply didn't read enough science fiction. Any short story could feature Caesar's failure to be a man. His assassination was a disaster for the Martian invasion of 44 BCE. |
| 16525 | Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: What sortal concepts we can bring to bear upon experience determines what we can find there. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Wiggins would wince at being classed among linguistic relativists of the Sapir-Whorf type, but that's where I'm putting this idea. Wiggins is a realist, who knows there are things out there our concepts miss. He compares it to a fishing net. He's wrong. |
| 16518 | We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The mind conceptualises objects, yet objects impinge upon the mind. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: A very nice statement of the relationship, and the fact that we don't just make our concepts up. |
| 16511 | A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept') [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: A 'conception' of horse is a theory of what a horse is, or what it is to be a horse. The conception is in no way the same as the concept. The conception is of the concept. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Wiggins sounds confident about a sharp distinction here, which I doubt, but some such distinction seems to required. I quite like Williams's 'fat' and 'thin' concepts. |
| 20692 | Money does produce happiness, but only up to a point [Harari] |
| Full Idea: An interesting conclusion (from questionnaires) is that money does indeed bring happiness. But only up to a point, and beyond that point it has little significance. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 19 'Counting') | |
| A reaction: The question is whether that flattening-off point is relative to those around us, or absolute, according to the needs of living. Though these two may not be separate. |
| 20663 | If a group is bound by gossip, the natural size is 150 people [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Sociological research has shown that the maximum 'natural' size of a group bound by gossip is about 150 individuals. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 02 'Legend') | |
| A reaction: On the other hand, most of us can learn the names of a group of about 450. Maybe the 'known' group and the 'gossip' group are equally significant. Not much use for a modern state, but of interest to communitarians. |
| 20677 | Since 1500 human population has increased fourteenfold, and consumption far more [Harari] |
| Full Idea: In the year 1500 there were about 500 million Homo sapiens in the world. Today there are 7 billion. …Human population has increased fourteenfold, our production 240-fold, and energy consumption 115-fold. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Discovery') | |
| A reaction: We really need to grasp how extraordinary this is. |
| 20688 | People 300m tons; domesticated animals 700m tons; larger wild animals 100m tons [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The combined mass of homo sapiens is about 300 million tons; the mass of all domesticated farmyard animals is about 700 million tons; the mass of the surviving larger wild animals (from porcupines up) is less than 100 million tons. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Permanent') | |
| A reaction: These really are figures that deserve much wider currency. Every school entrance hall needs a board with a few of the basic dramatic statistics about human life on Earth. |
| 20674 | The Nazi aim was to encourage progressive evolution, and avoid degeneration [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The main ambition of the Nazis was to protect humankind from degeneration and encourage its progressive evolution. …Given the state of scientific knowledge in 1933, Nazi beliefs were hardly outside the pale. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Worship') | |
| A reaction: It still sounds a fairly worthy ambition, close to the heart of educationalists everywhere. The problems start with the definition of 'degeneration' and 'progress'. |
| 20679 | We stabilise societies with dogmas, either of dubious science, or of non-scientific values [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Modern attempts to stabilise the sociopolitical order either declare a scientific theory (such as racial theories for Nazis, or economic ones for Communists) to be an absolute truths, or declare non-scientific dogmas (such as liberal values) | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Ignoramus') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 20690 | The state fostered individualism, to break the power of family and community [Harari] |
| Full Idea: States and markets use their growing power to weaken the bonds of family and community. They made an offer that couldn't be refused - 'become individuals' (over marriage, jobs and residence). The 'romantic individual' is not a rebel against the state. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Collapse') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] See the film 'Breaking the Waves'. An interesting slant on the Romantic movement. See Wordsworth's 'Michael'. Capitalism needs shoppers with their own money, and a mobile workforce. |
| 20689 | In 1750 losing your family and community meant death [Harari] |
| Full Idea: A person who lost her family and community around 1750 was as good as dead. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Collapse') | |
| A reaction: This is a very good advert for liberal individualism, and marks the downside of 'too much community'. |
| 20681 | The sacred command of capitalism is that profits must be used to increase production [Harari] |
| Full Idea: In the new capitalist creed, the first and most sacred commandment is: The profits of production must be reinvested in increasing production. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: In this sense, capitalism is less greedy than its predecessors. 17th century aristocratic monopolists simply spent the profits of their activities. See the gorgeous clothes then (and pyramids and palaces), and the quiet suits of capitalists. |
| 20682 | The main rule of capitalism is that all other goods depend on economic growth [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The principle tenet of capitalism is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for it, because justice, freedom, and even happiness all depend on economic growth. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: In this respect, the main opponent of captitalism is green politics, rather than marxism. |
| 20683 | The progress of capitalism depends entirely on the new discoveries and gadgets of science [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. …The human economy has managed to keep on going only thanks to the fact that scientists come up with a new discovery or gadget every few years. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: For example, the desperate but unconvincing attempts to persuade us of the novelty of new models of car. Built-in obsolescence is needed once a design becomes static. |
| 20687 | In capitalism the rich invest, and the rest of us go shopping [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The supreme commandment of the rich is 'invest!', and the supreme commandment of the rest of us is 'buy!' | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 17 'Age') | |
| A reaction: Hence not only do the rich get much richer, while most of us remain roughly where we were, but there is a huge gulf between the investors and the non-investors. Encouraging small investors is a step forward. |
| 20685 | No market is free of political bias, and markets need protection of their freedoms [Harari] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as a market free of all political bias, …and markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft and violence. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Cult') | |
| A reaction: Is this in theory, or in practice? In Sicily the free market has been a tool of the mafia. |
| 20693 | Freedom may work against us, as individuals can choose to leave, and make fewer commitments [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The freedom we value so highly may work against us. We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbours, but they can choose to leave us. With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path, we find it ever harder to make commitments. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 19 'Counting') | |
| A reaction: This is the worry of the communitarian. I take freedom to be a great social virtue - but an overrated one. |
| 20691 | Real peace is the implausibility of war (and not just its absence) [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Real peace is not the mere absence of war. Real peace is the implausibility of war. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Pax') | |
| A reaction: I have a nasty feeling that war only becomes implausible because it hasn't happened for a long time. War looked implausible for Britain in 1890. War certainly now looks implausible in western Europe. |
| 20684 | Financing is increasingly through credit rather than taxes; people prefer investing to taxation [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The European conquest of the world was increasingly financed through credit rather than taxes. …Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everyone is happy to invest. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Columbus') | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the mechanism that drives the unstoppable increase of the gulf between the rich and the poor in modern times. With investment, the rich get richer. |
| 20675 | The more you know about history, the harder it becomes to explain [Harari] |
| Full Idea: A distinguishing mark of history is that the better you know a historical period, the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 13 'Hindsight') | |
| A reaction: Presumaby that means it resembles statistics. Each individual reading is perplexing, but some patterns emerge on the large scale. |
| 20676 | History teaches us that the present was not inevitable, and shows us the possibilities [Harari] |
| Full Idea: We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and the we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we can imagine. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 13 'Hindsight') | |
| A reaction: On the whole winners forget history, and losers are branded through and through with it. If you don't know history, you can never understand the latter group. |
| 20671 | In order to explain both order and evil, a single evil creator is best, but no one favours that [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Monotheism explains order but not evil, and dualist religion explains evil but not order. One logical solution is a single omnipotent God who created the universe, and is evil - but nobody in history has had much stomach for that belief. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
| A reaction: Eh? Is there not also good, which also needs explaining? And there is some chaos to be explained too. Hume offers the best explanations. An inexperienced god, a team of squabbling gods, a god with shifting moods…. Study the facts first. |
| 20664 | Animism is belief that every part of nature is aware and feeling, and can communicate [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Animism is the belief that almost every place, every animal, every plant and every natural phenomenon has awareness and feelings, and can communicated direct with humans. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 03 'Talking') | |
| A reaction: So does this count as a 'supernatural' belief system? It seems not, if the awareness is integral to the natural feature, and dies with it. Panpsychism is not supernatural either. A problem for anyone trying to define Naturalism. |
| 20666 | Most polytheist recognise one supreme power or law, behind the various gods [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Polytheism does not necessarily dispute the existence of a single power or law governing the entire universe. Most poytheist and even animist religions recognised such a supreme power that stands behind all the different gods, demons and holy rocks. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Benefits') | |
| A reaction: Presumably this one supreme power was always taken to be too remote for communication or worship. Are the other gods seen as slaves, or friends, or ambassadors of the Supreme One? |
| 20667 | Polytheism is open-minded, and rarely persecutes opponents [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes 'heretics' and 'infidels'. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Benefits') | |
| A reaction: The Old Testament tells of the Jews turning on local pagans, and India was presumably tolerant Hindus encountering less tolerant Muslims. Then there's Christians in Africa. Dreadful bunch, the monotheists. Romans killed very few Christians. |
| 20665 | Mythologies are usual contracts with the gods, exchanging devotion for control of nature [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Much of ancient mythology is a legal contract in which humans promise everlasting devotion to the gods in exchange for mastery over plants and animals. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Silencing') | |
| A reaction: [He cites the first book of Genesis] So how readily do you swith allegiance, if someone else's gods are more successful? Why be loyal a loser. It should be like shopping - but I bet it wasn't. |
| 20669 | Dualist religions see everything as a battleground of good and evil forces [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Polytheism gave birth to monotheism, and to dualistic religions. Dualism explains that the entire universe is a battleground between good and evil forces, and everything that happens is part of that struggle. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
| A reaction: Presumably we are supposed to support the good guys, so the gods are not equals. God v Satan seems the right model, but Satan has to be beyond God's control, or else the problem of evil has to be solved. Empedocles held something like this. |
| 20670 | Dualist religions say the cosmos is a battleground, so can’t explain its order [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Dualist religions solve the problem of evil, but are unnerved by the Problem of Order. …If Good and Evil battle for control of the world, who enforces the laws governing this cosmic war? | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
| A reaction: You might explain it if one side was persistently winning, which is roughly God v Satan. |
| 20673 | Manichaeans and Gnostics: good made spirit, evil made flesh [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Manichaeans and Gnostics argued that the good god created the spirit and the soul, whereas matter and bodes are the creation of the evil god. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
| A reaction: Hm. What motivated the evil god to do that? The evil god's achievement looks a lot more impressive. |
| 20668 | Monotheism appeared in Egypt in 1350 BCE, when the god Aten was declared supreme [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The first monotheist religion known to us appeared in Egypt c.1350 BCE, when Pharaoh Akenaten declared that one of minor deities of the Egyptian pantheon, the god Aten, was in fact the supreme power ruling the universe. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'God') | |
| A reaction: Zeus seems to have started like a tribal chief, and eventually turned into something like God. |