ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) (11/01/85)
I hate to say it, I'm going to HAVE to rephrase this one. Mr. McNeil has done too good a job of confusing people (including himself), and confusion, it seems, is contagious. I'm getting numerous responses from people who simply didn't understand my reply. One, via UNIX mail read in part: >Mr. Holden, > Mr. McNeil has provided you with a great deal of concrete evidence that >the ancients were in fact aware of the roundness of the earth (and in fact, >an alexandrian measured it fairly accurately about 400 BCE). All you can >come up with in reply is some low-quality mudslinging. If you have an >argument to make, make it. Your actions indicate that you don't. I BELIEVE that the ancients knew how big the earth was and that it was round, and have never stated otherwise. I believe also that modern scientists err when they attempt to discount ancient catastrophe myths such as that of the global flood or the Phaeton legend by making claims that the ancients simply didn't understand how big "global" is, and tended to see every large- scale local flood as a cosmic disaster. The question is, "What does Michael McNeil believe?". It's kind of hard to tell. First we see: >> 2. The big lie: The ancients saw the world as a small flat >> place, and typically knew little of the world beyond their >> own back yards. >> >> The reality, from Ovid's "Metamorphoses: >> >> "When God, whichever God he was, created >> The universe we know, he made of earth >> A turning sphere so delicately poised >> That water flowed in waves beneath the wind.... >> God made zones on earth, the fifth zone naked >> With heat where none may live, at each extreme >> A land of snow (the poles), and, at their side, two zones >> Of temperate winds and sun and shifting cold." > >Ho, hum. This is a big lie only to persons as ignorant as Ted Holden. Which I take to mean that McNeil believes I am wrong and that the ancients DID INDEED see the world as a small flat place; is there any other way to interpret this? However, this sentence is immediately followed by: >There is, of course, a childhood myth nowadays that people in the past >thought that the world was flat and Columbus, the lone far thinker of >his day, set out and proved them all wrong. In fact, all educated >persons knew not only during the Renaissance but during ancient times >that the Earth is spherical. Aristotle demonstrated the sphericity >of the Earth quite convincingly with arguments as valid today as >they were in 330 B.C. ...... Which would indicate that McNeil accepts my thesis. This is McNeil vs McNeil. The McNeil who accepts Holden's theory goes on for another 60 lines or so making the point that the ancients KNEW all about the true size and shape of the world. Then, in chapter two of the article, the other McNeil re-emerges. We read: >Remember Homer? His was >an age when it was still a big deal to sail from Greece to Sicily! > >This was at least as true for the Hebrews of the Old Testament. >During early times the Hebrews were nomadic herdsmen and women who >had originated in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and never wandered >very far from that region. They weren't seafarers or caravan >operators, they weren't really cosmopolitan at all. Foreigners >were heathens who carried contaminating ideas. The Hebrews' >concept of "foreign" was Phoenicia or Egypt. Legends and myths >regarding supposed "world-wide" disasters can be trusted only as >far as the limits to the travels of the people who invented them. I've read through this two part article several times and I'm still not sure of what to think of it. There's always the chance that McNeil is some- thing of a double-talk artist and is even now laughing at the confusion he has caused amongst the rest of us, in which case he is to be congratulated. There is the further possibility that he actually is a schizoid personality like Cybil or the woman whose life was portrayed in "The Two Faces of Eve". Unfortunately, however, I would rate these two possibilities as less than a 50% chance, taken together. The better guess is that McNeil is part of an entire generation which has simply never learned to write or organize thoughts terribly well; that his governor is set on about three paragraphs and he tried to write a 20 paragraph article with predictable results. My own general level of respect for posters on net.origins would go up considerably for anybody whose postings weren't simply carved up versions of my own or somebody elses, i.e. for anybody who could actually write five paragraphs without a ">" or ">>" appearing amongst them, and still have the whole article sound rational. So far, aside from myself, this group includes only about five or six people, Bill Jefferys, and Paul Dubois being the only two who come immediately to mind. Scene from the WaterGate Hotel, from the Lampoon Impeachment Day Album: "This is L. Patrick Grey of the FBI. Now, I know I'm in there, and if I don't come out in five minutes with my hands up, I'm coming in after me."
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (11/04/85)
In article <450@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes: > > >Which I take to mean that McNeil believes I am wrong and that the ancients >DID INDEED see the world as a small flat place; is there any other way to >interpret this? However, this sentence is immediately followed by: > ** A discussion of the Columbus and the Americas ** > >Which would indicate that McNeil accepts my thesis. This is McNeil vs >McNeil. The McNeil who accepts Holden's theory goes on for another 60 >lines or so making the point that the ancients KNEW all about the true >size and shape of the world. Then, in chapter two of the article, the >other McNeil re-emerges. We read: > ** A discussion of Homeric and ancient Hebrew cosmology ** > > I've read through this two part article several times and I'm still not >sure of what to think of it. There's always the chance that McNeil is some- >thing of a double-talk artist and is even now laughing at the confusion he >has caused amongst the rest of us, in which case he is to be congratulated. Or he takes the position that *some* ancients new about the size and shape of the Earth and *some* did not. You seem to think that either they *all* knew or none knew. I think Mr McNeil is truing to show that ancient cultures were *far* from uniform. There have been many hundreds of cultures and civilizations i the history of mankind and they have differed in almost every concievable manner. Just because the Classic Greeks figured out the size and shape of the Earth does *not* mean that the pre-classic(Homeric) Greeks had done so! Really, what I read in Mr McNeil's article was an attempt to counteract your idea that everyone who did not accept Velikovsky's "theories" also believed that the ancient were stupid. He was thus showing that he had a balanced, realistic conception of the ancients by displaying his knowledge of a few widely misunderstood events. -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) UUCP: {ttidca|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|quad1|nrcvax|bellcore|logico}!psivax!friesen ARPA: ttidca!psivax!friesen@rand-unix.arpa
pamp@bcsaic.UUCP (pam pincha) (11/05/85)
Ted seem to be confused about McNeil's article. I think part of the problem is the ignoring of the phrase "any educated" person..... What seems to be forgotten is that the facts about the size, roundness etc.etc.etc was NOT a widespread, common fact -- but one known to a select few. Hence, the seemingly contradictory nature of a few knowing something of the true nature of the earth vs. the rest of the population which roamed around in varing stages of blissfull ignorance.(A good analogy would be the principles of Uniformitarianism- only someone in the fields of geology and archaeology would be very familar with it. It's the crux of much of how these disciplines view the world. Most of the rest of the world could care less...) All in all, the article was not that confusing. One just has to have the right context and the same assumptions. Ted doesn't seem to have this particular one. P.M.Pincha-Wagener