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Oh shush! You guys are going to make me blush. 
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Sep 14, 2015 22:28
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Dalael posted:
True History‽ I love True History!
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Sep 14, 2015 22:54
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Dalael posted:We just finished this discussion a few pages back. Go back about 5 or 6 pages and enjoy. To put a finer point on it than other posters, look at Friendly Tumor's post history and then guess at the odds that they have no idea that a multi-page discussion of Atlantis just occurred.
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Sep 14, 2015 23:35
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You know every single one of your ancestors had sex? Gross right?
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Sep 14, 2015 23:57
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Arglebargle III posted:You know every single one of your ancestors had sex? Gross right? Pretty sure some of my ancestors reproduced asexually bro.
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Sep 15, 2015 00:11
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Arglebargle III posted:You know every single one of your ancestors had sex? Gross right? That simply can't be correct.
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Sep 15, 2015 00:16
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Arglebargle III posted:You know every single one of your ancestors had sex? Gross right? Yeah I have tons of ancestors who lost a lot of children at birth. So no not every single one?
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Sep 15, 2015 00:49
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You seem confused.
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Sep 15, 2015 01:54
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This line of thinking is not going to end well. Lets go back to food chat. How did ancient China consistently field and supply such enormous armies compared to most of their European contemporaries?
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Sep 15, 2015 02:22
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With their enormous population. 
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Sep 15, 2015 02:23
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Yep, their capacity to field giant armies was due to their ability to have sex.
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Sep 15, 2015 02:43
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Ynglaur posted:This line of thinking is not going to end well. Lets go back to food chat. Thanks for asking, Ynglaur, that's a great question. *clinton thumb* The reasons for this are twoferfold: First, Chinese historiography is behind the curve on critical examination of numbers in historical texts. Like the classical texts in Western tradition, the Eastern texts probably exxxaggerate a lot of numbers, in some cases there are numbers that have to be errors, and in some cases like the notorious use of "10,000" to express "an 'ole fookin' lot m8," numbers can be stylistic choices that are naively taken at face value. For example, the Qin and Han throne rooms despite wildly different recorded sizes suspiciously both fit 10,000 people inside them, even though the Han throne room is a reasonably-sized room and not a football stadium. Second, the Chinese imperial state descends from the Qin state, whose trademark move was annexing a bunch of agricultural land, irrigating it, and then setting up an efficient system to move it to the front line troops. Qin conquered China by having more soldiers than everybody else, and they had more soldiers by producing more food. This philosophy became part of the Imperial state going forward, and you see it mentioned by historical Chinese leaders in the Three Kingdoms and Sui dynasty. Third, China has a huge population because it's got so much land in cultivation. Regions we think of today as breadbaskets like the south of Russia or the American great plains were not usable as crop land until the advent of the steel plow. Going back a little further, Europe's huge forests often remained forest not because people didn't know about clearing land and farming but because before the iron plow that land was not worth clearing and tilling. In contrast China has very little such historically-unexploitable farmland and could begin exploiting its arable land before the advent of the iron plow much less the steel plow. Also in southern China the growing season is long enough for two to three harvests. *end Clinton thumb* Thanks Ynglaur, it was great talking to you.
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Sep 15, 2015 02:51
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Ynglaur posted:This line of thinking is not going to end well. Lets go back to food chat. The proportion of professional soldiers to the whole population was about the same in ancient China as it was in the ancient Rome, ie. about 1%. Medieval Europe was a poor barbaric backwater ruled by nobility instead of bureaucrats which meant that European rulers couldn't support that many professional soldiers, so they they had small peacetime armies and had to rely on knights and mercenaries during war. The main reason for the large Chinese armies was their large population and relatively efficient bureaucracy. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 06:51
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Arglebargle III posted:First, Chinese historiography is behind the curve on critical examination of numbers in historical texts. This is super important for reading Chinese history. Due to various factors (the main one in modern China being absurd nationalism) there is essentially zero critical analysis of historical texts from Chinese historians. Sometimes you will find more analysis from authors in Taiwan/HK or Chinese scholars who split for the US. Then you have a lot of writers in English who do Chinese history are, shockingly enough, huge Sinophiles. And a decent number of them just report whatever load of poo poo the Chinese scholars made. Some do it because they're just translating sources, some do it because they have an agenda or are dumb enough to believe the aforementioned loads of poo poo. Basically treat Chinese history as if you're reading something from before modern critical analysis of texts. Unless it's one of the newer works from authors in the US, some of those I've been reading do a good job with addressing the problem. For some reason British authors tend to be more uncritically accepting of the Chinese historiography. I don't think critical historiography is even a concept in the PRC at the moment.
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Sep 15, 2015 15:39
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Grand Fromage posted:This is super important for reading Chinese history. Due to various factors (the main one in modern China being absurd nationalism) there is essentially zero critical analysis of historical texts from Chinese historians. Sometimes you will find more analysis from authors in Taiwan/HK or Chinese scholars who split for the US. Then you have a lot of writers in English who do Chinese history are, shockingly enough, huge Sinophiles. And a decent number of them just report whatever load of poo poo the Chinese scholars made. Some do it because they're just translating sources, some do it because they have an agenda or are dumb enough to believe the aforementioned loads of poo poo. I wonder if this is part of why Chinese histories spend a lot of time evaluating the morality or wisdom of various leader's actions. If you aren't going to question the facts it frees up a lot of time to debate their meaning.
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Sep 15, 2015 16:50
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Arglebagle: at the risk of white-knighting, I think what Quift is trying to convey is that myths and legends can be true in the philosophical sense without being factual in the material sense, and that the truths imparted and inferred from such stories can be valuable. This kind of relates to everyone's answers to my earlier question about China. If I understand them correctly, ancient Chinese historians were more concerned with the moral and political lessons of history, than of the hard facts of "so-and-so brought 100,000 soldiers to the battle" versus the more factual, "so-and-so brought 40,000 soldiers to the battle, 20,000 peasants for cheap labor, and 40,000 prostitutes."
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Sep 15, 2015 17:53
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I think you made my point better than me. It is a question of viewing things different than we are used to. Let us say uncritically. Which is quite hard to do some we are not trained that way. But when we learn to think critically we unlearn to think symbolically. Sorry of. Point is quite hard to express in a phone post.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:20
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I think I'll stick to thinking critically and empiricism and actually knowing things, thanks all the same.
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Sep 15, 2015 22:05
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I think I'll stick to thinking critically and empiricism and actually knowing things, thanks all the same. Confucius say, "Enjoy knowing without understanding.". 
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Sep 15, 2015 23:01
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Ynglaur posted:Confucius say, "Enjoy knowing without understanding.". That dude understood the value of thinking critically, when required.
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Sep 15, 2015 23:21
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To conclude this discussion of philosophy, first read Aristotle (even a modernized or condensed smattering is fine) and then read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If we had all done that this discussion would have been unnecessary.
Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 00:22
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Keldoclock posted:To conclude this discussion of philosophy, first read Aristotle (even a modernized or condensed smattering is fine) quote:and then read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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Sep 16, 2015 00:26
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At risk of causing another even worse derail, why not? It is at least a book, in my opinion the book, about this very subject of bringing together the traditionally incompatible classical and romantic viewpoints. Have you read it? If you'd like to discuss it further please contact me at my username @ gmail.com.
Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 00:51
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because reading actual philosophy or theology on that topic is better.
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Sep 16, 2015 00:56
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HEY GAL posted:because reading actual philosophy or theology on that topic is better. The metaphysics of reality is very much actual philosophy, if you like it or not is another question entirely. Pirsig had been writing about philosophy for at least 20 years at the time he concluded his theory, and his theory is as concrete a part of modern metaphysics as any other. If you want to sneer at a book because it was written by an American and only (published) 41 years ago, okay, but you are doing yourself a disservice. I find it an excellent introductory text for someone who already knows something of Aristotelian forms and has some idea of the general shape of eastern philosophy. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 01:05
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Keldoclock posted:then read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Goddamnit.
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Sep 16, 2015 02:11
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*Aristotle pretending to rev an imaginary motorcycle, and he's making engine noises with his mouth*
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Sep 16, 2015 02:28
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:empiricism and actually knowing things lol 
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Sep 16, 2015 03:04
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I hate book
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Sep 16, 2015 09:11
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Ynglaur posted:This kind of relates to everyone's answers to my earlier question about China. If I understand them correctly, ancient Chinese historians were more concerned with the moral and political lessons of history, than of the hard facts of "so-and-so brought 100,000 soldiers to the battle" versus the more factual, "so-and-so brought 40,000 soldiers to the battle, 20,000 peasants for cheap labor, and 40,000 prostitutes." This is also how the vast majority of ancient European/Near Eastern writers wrote. However, it has since been critically analyzed and combined with archaeology to produce more real information, rather than just taking it at face value.
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Sep 16, 2015 12:21
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Grand Fromage posted:This is also how the vast majority of ancient European/Near Eastern writers wrote. However, it has since been critically analyzed and combined with archaeology to produce more real information, rather than just taking it at face value. The Greek historian Thucydides, heralded for his unusual-in-ancient-historiography insistence on not including fables as history and on trying to be as factual as possible, straight up admits that the speeches in his book are made up. They're either based on the general gist of what was said or reported to have been said, or what he thought the speaker should have said. "Facts" were definitely not looked at as we see them today.
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Sep 16, 2015 14:21
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The fun thing about Thucydides is that he is clearly very bitter about the way that Athenian democracy treated him.
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Sep 16, 2015 15:08
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SlothfulCobra posted:The fun thing about Thucydides is that he is clearly very bitter about the way that Athenian democracy treated him. Man, it was just a little exile amongst friends. At least he wasn't proscribed or executed or lynched like so many of his fellow citizens. Athenian democracy was pretty hosed up, tbf.
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Sep 16, 2015 15:27
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How was buttsex accomplished in ancient times? What did they use for lube?
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Sep 16, 2015 17:45
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VanSandman posted:How was buttsex accomplished in ancient times? What did they use for lube? Somebody you liked? Olive oil. Slave? Blood. My educated guess.
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Sep 16, 2015 17:48
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LingcodKilla posted:Somebody you liked? Olive oil. How educated?  My guess is whatever they used for hetero sex (if at all), or spit. Buttsex is not terribly complicated.
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Sep 16, 2015 18:27
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Ynglaur posted:Arglebagle: at the risk of white-knighting, I think what Quift is trying to convey is that myths and legends can be true in the philosophical sense without being factual in the material sense, and that the truths imparted and inferred from such stories can be valuable. Huh? I don't think I weighed in on that discussion.
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Sep 16, 2015 19:17
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homullus posted:The Greek historian Thucydides, heralded for his unusual-in-ancient-historiography insistence on not including fables as history and on trying to be as factual as possible, straight up admits that the speeches in his book are made up. They're either based on the general gist of what was said or reported to have been said, or what he thought the speaker should have said. "Facts" were definitely not looked at as we see them today. How would one go about this any other way with no recordings or stenographs?
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Sep 16, 2015 19:29
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JaucheCharly posted:How would one go about this any other way with no recordings or stenographs? The modern answer is "You don't. If you don't have the real speech, you don't put it into your history book." There's two sides to this question, though. Thucydides isn't the first ancient historian to have speeches in his work, but he might be the first person to admit they're fabricated. The marvel is not that he makes up the speeches, but that he admits it when nobody else does...but then, despite his insistence on facts in a quasi-modern sense, goes ahead and makes them up anyway. The expectations of ancient historiography were different. How would you get the actual text of a speech, though? Memory, and from the publication of the speech itself. Much has been written about the ancients and memorization, some by the ancients themselves (Cicero's De Oratore, for example), and some believe their memory was better than ours. Aside from that, we do occasionally have speeches from orators preserved, because they published them themselves. Whether the published version is the version actually given is a separate question, but it's plausibly closer to the truth than hearsay gussied up with rhetorical flourishes.
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Sep 16, 2015 19:46
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Some researcher on In Our Time said Thucydides included the speeches even though they were fabricated to explain the historical figures' point of view and motivations. Even if they're not real, they're a valuable record of what Thucydides thought about why these people were doing what they did.
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Sep 16, 2015 19:50
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