From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue May 04 1999 - 12:25:37 MDT
"Michael S. Lorrey" <mike@lorrey.com> writes:
> Destruction of the library probably helped the development of
>scientific technological culture, because the loss of its knowledge,
>right or wrong, inspired generations of men to conduct original
>research using the scientific method to 'recover' that 'lost'
>knowledge.
Huh? I don't see much evidence for this. Among the humanities it has
indeed caused much research, trying to piece together the *original*
Illiad or _The State_, but among the natural sciences there was never
the same recover-mentality, not even during the renaissance.
>As a result we have reached ever higher levels of
>acheivement. I think that if the library had remained, we would have
>developed a system which prized respect for the old knowledge over the
>potential of new knowledge.
That is of course a danger. And I think we have seen the effects in
some parts of the humanities :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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