EB and the West

[oudysseos]

A. Black Athena is highly controversial, politicised ( the author is a marxist ), and not particularly well written.
B. Martin Bernal is clearly completely and totally bonkers, often just plain wrong and obviously a total asshole.
Also he lets his desire to prove his case overcome his respect for the truth. Hardly a unique sin, eh Signifer?
C. Anyone who ignores or burns books/ideas because they don't like the author or the conclusion is a bit of a f***wit.

In fact I disagree with a lot (most) of what Bernal writes, yet some of what he says about the history of classical scholarship is not worthless. I could wish that his argument had been made by someone nicer and with a higher regard for good scholarship. For me the difficulty is that classical Greek culture is so central to western culture that it is nigh impossible to have any kind of objective perspective on it. That's precisely why I have read some of Black Athena (sorry, Martin, I skipped a lot of your ranting), because I like to think that I'm grown up enough to entertain another point of view, and I think that you're not entitled to disagree with a book until you have read it. If this was Third Reich Total War I would encourage people to read Mein Kampf. Recommending a book is not the same as endorsing its views.

And hey, you know what, I have almost precisely the same reaction to the first post of this thread- I think it's badly written, shows poor scholarship and has an obvious political agenda. But I don't think that Signifer should be burnt or ignored. And it may come as a surprise to him but I do agree that there is something called Western Culture and that it has great value (after all my degree is in classics). I just don't think that he has shown that he knows what it is.

[KARTLOS]

C. Anyone who ignores or burns books/ideas because they don't like the author or the conclusion is a bit of a f***wit.



. That's precisely why I have read some of Black Athena because I like to think that I'm grown up enough to entertain another point of view, and I think that you're not entitled to disagree with a book until you have read it.

.

but now you have read it surely you can burn it? it would be cleansing for your soul, you could consider it a sacrifice to the spirit of common sense!

[oudysseos]

KARTLOS- Let's not make this about Black Athena. I think everybody should have a look at it and make up their own minds.

Mea Culpa, I was (only very slightly) overstating the importance of Muslin scholarship to the renaissance in order to make a point.
I was annoyed at Signifer's didactic tone and his wildly unfounded assertions about the definition of the ancient classical west (his redundancy). His inclusion of algebra as one of the achievements of Graeco-Roman civilization is just the most obvious example of his cultural prejudice and his willingness to claim other people's accomplishments as 'westernisms' own.
The ironic (for Signifer) part is that regardless of their own cultural background people like Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi (that's the algebra guy), ibn Sina or Ibn Rushd were totally in love with Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy and Archimedes and kept them alive for us. We owe the survival of most of the important texts of westernism to easterners! Without Muslim scholars we would have no Aristotle. And we only have what they though was good enough to translate into arabic, so how western are we now?
The same applies to medicine- another one of Signifers defining characteristics of westernism that he GOT TOTALLY WRONG.

**Goes away and has a nice cuppa**

Hey well how bout them Twins, eh?

But seriously, It is difficult to overestimate Western Culture's debt to the East. I know it's only wikipedia, but still have a look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_t...e_12th_century

Kinda hard to find a sentence without an arabic name in there. Anyone feeling slightly humble and less Romano-centric?