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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (39630)	6/8/1999 8:34:00 AM
From: Bob Lao-Tse	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

"Old Man, your causal analysis is generally rejected." "I'm not old, I'm (35)!" "Well, you wouldn't just have me call you 'man,' would you?" -Monty Python and The Holy Grail Anyway..., I'm not entirely sure that I agree with your refutation, but I wasn't really that attached to the idea in the first place. It's just something that I dashed off for AA because I was frankly astounded that (s)he seemed to attribute Sam's examples of the potential sources of Christian ritual to anger. I was just trying to demonstrate that there were simple logical reasons to believe that Christian rituals were not originally Christian, and that the recognition of that didn't require any particular emotional state. And to be honest, when I read your response, I didn't have the foggiest notion what you were talking about. I didn't remember writing anything at all on the subject of causality. I think that the basic problem with my statement is that it's not specific enough. There are lots of complications to the notion of tracing something back to its true origin. Any analysis would have to take into consideration the time periods involved, the level of communication between the people involved, whether the idea is a scientific discovery or a philosophical concept, and probably many other things that I can't think of right now. In your example, Leibniz and Newton were virtual contemporaries, so who came first is less important. It would be relatively safe to assume (at least before the electronic age) that they were working separately and mostly independently. Additionally, they were essentially working on something that was just laying there waiting to be discovered, rather than a set of rituals and observances. Calculus is implied in the workings of the universe -- Christmas isn't. Your recognition of the debt that both of them owe to Archimedes sounds like a great example of my idea, so thanks for that one. :&#172) Like I said, I'm not that attached to the idea. I will certainly admit that because of the broad strokes I painted it in with it's seriously flawed. But I think there's a simple and self-evident truth lurking in there somewhere if someone cared to phrase it carefully enough. Kindly, -BLT