EB and the West

[oudysseos]

Although I was willing to admit that I was a little quick off the draw, attitude wise, with Signifer, and also guilty of a (very) little hyperbole in relation to the influence of Persian/Arabic/Moorish scholars on the renaissance, I am pretty confident that Herodotus was very candid about the many cultural, religious and scientific debts that the Greeks of his day thought they owed to others. Whether or not he was actually right is another issue. Here's a few quotes.

Book 2 ca. line 109

...This was the way in which geometry was invented, and passed afterwards into Greece- for knowledge of the sundial and the gnomon and the twelve divisions of the day came into Greece from Babylon

Book 2 ca. line 58

It was the Egyptians too who originated, and taught the Greeks to use ceremonial meetings, processions, and processional offerings.

Book 2 ca. line 49

Melampus, in my view, was an able man who acquired the art of divination and brought into Greece, with little change, a number of things which he had learned in Egypt... The names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt...

There's lots more but I think ye get my drift. Herodotus is not the only weak link in Signifer's chain so I don't want to spend all night on just that.


Not that I or Herodotus or anyone reasonable would ever claim that "The Greeks" (a worrisome generalization as it is) didn't develop and advance some of scientific and/or cultural memes (you might want to look up memes- but it's not an order) that they thought were good and useful, just as al-Kwarizmi, ibn Rushd and ibn Sina did, and just as the renaissance translators and scholars did, and just as we (at least, scientists and academics- I'm just a chef and parttime musician) do today.
That, in my view, is what makes it so silly to try and set 'westernism' apart based on characteristics with multiple contributions from many sources. Science is the child of many parents, and not exclusively western ones, and the same applies to medicine, architecture, engineering, sculpture, grammar, oratory, ethics, and everything else.
Why is so important to you to claim these things solely for the west? The achievements of Greece and Rome are substantial enough without this kind of thing, and an attempt (such as EB) to make people aware of the cultures of the non-Roman contemporaries of Scipio in no way detracts from Graeco-Roman preeminence at the time. Nothing can, as it's all history and has already happened.

The shelves of Waterstones are filled with popular books on Greece and Rome- more than a single person could reasonably ever expect to read. What do you care if there's one or two on the Persians? How is anyone harmed?

Finally, I intend to put my thoughts together in relation to your statements about music and painting, as I find them quite disturbing.
But I have to ask, isn't calling polytonal music 'The supreme achievement' a purely subjective expression of your musical tastes? Schoenberg, Webern, Bartok, Copland, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrnae might disagree with you. Oh, and by the way, 'polytonality' is the use of more than one key simultaneously, and is not particularly common, so that's probably not exactly what you meant. You probably meant polyphony. It may sound pedantic, but if you're a musician (I am, semi-professionally) that's a pretty big mistake to make.

Gotta go. The kids wanna play EB, not talk about it.