Surprise!

Historians and scientists love to surprise people. For example, most people know that Cleopatra was the queen of Egypt, but did you know that she wasn't Egyptian? She was actually Greek, the descendant of one of Alexander's Macedonian generals; she and her family spoke Greek, and didn't consider themselves Egyptians, although they would engage in the traditional ceremonies of the Pharaohs in order to get the popular support of the Egyptians.

But some reporters go too far in their desire to surprise readers, when the actually falsify sources, and create fictions, merely so that they can say something unexpected. For exampel, the actress who played Jan Brady in the famous TV series did not die of a drug overdose; she's alive and well. But the story about her was created those desiring to surprise an audience.

More serious examples have been uncovered by The Washington Times, in January of 2002:

Hoping to close two national forests, government scientists planted evidence that the forests were inhabited by an endangered species of lynx.

The scientists' dishonesty undermined a three-year study and confirmed suspicions that some government scientists fake studies is order to control environmental policy.

Another example from American history:

Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles apparently believes so strongly in gun control that he invented a history for the purpose of undermining the Constitution's Second Amendment, the right of citizens to own guns.

Professor Bellesiles' politically correct book, Arming America, was awarded the Bancroft Prize, a prestigious award for historians. But scholars examining the work say Mr. Bellesiles' conclusions are based on made-up and nonexistent sources.

Mr. Bellesiles aruges that gun ownership was so rare among early Americans, even on the frontiers, that no one would have cared enough about the right to give it constitutional protection. He claims to have studied many wills and to have found scant evidence of guns being bequeathed to heirs.

When skeptical scholars checked his sources, they found he claimed to have studied wills of people in Colonial Rhode Island known to have died without wills! He also claims to have studied probate records in San Francisco for the years 1849-59. However, the city's librarians say no such records exist. They were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.

Most historians and scientists are honest. But we need to think critically, especially when they are writing about issues related to modern politics. They might be so interested in keeping tourists out of national forests, or in eliminating the Second Amendment, that they falsify data to support their points. When science meets politics, look for fake evidence; when history intersects with controversial issues, watch for falsified sources.

Which Sargon?

The Ancient Near East included three different rulers, all named Sagon:

The first reigned from approximately 2350 until 2300 B.C., and gained control of both Sumer and Akkad; he united them to form Babylonia, and his empire included all of Mesopotamia, and had significant influence to regions well beyond that area.

The second reigned around 1850 B.C., ruled Assyria early in its heyday.

The third also ruled Assyria, between 722 and 705 B.C., and was responsible for the final wave of attacks on the North Kingdom of Israel, conquering its capitol city Samaria; the Hebrew author Isaiah gives us information about him.

Three men, with the same name, in different countries, living over a thousand years apart!

The Many Sides of John Locke

The writings and ideas of John Locke stand as some of the most brilliant in English history. They are marked by, among other things, their variety.

One aspect of Locke's thought is political; he is famous for his significant influence on the Founding Fathers and their creation of the United States Constitution. A different side of Locke is seen in his purely philosophical essays, in which he ponders questions of human consciousness, perception, and knowledge; his formulations of empiricism and the process by which the mind turns sensations into ideas remain influential to this day.

These two facets of Locke are connected by a third and a fourth.

One connection is the legal implication of Locke's empiricism; if each human being is indeed born as a "blank slate", then the legal defense - used by, e.g., a kleptomaniac caught stealing - of "I was born that way" is illegitimate. Locke denies the existence of innate ideas.

A second connection between Locke's politics and his purely philosophical ideas is the implication of religious belief. Locke took great pains to show that the majority (not all) of humans arrive at their religious beliefs rationally, and that, therefore, we can also rely on the majority to vote on laws that are, on average, good laws. Locke said that, because religious beliefs are most central and essential to human thought, then their rationality ensures the rationality of other human thought. He also pointed out that those occasional instances of irrational religious belief are usually due to a lack of information or a lack of study, and can be corrected by exercise of the rational faculties of the mind upon substantial bodies of fact.

The REAL Martin Luther King

It is most appropriate for students in the Humanities to note a national holiday, Martin Luther King's birthday, because Rev. King was a diligent student of the humanities.

Originally born as Michael King, Jr., in 1928 (his father was named Michael King, Sr.), the father and son both changed their names to "Martin Luther" after studying the works of the German Reformer. One can only imagine how profound the impact of Luther's books was, if they caused father and son to change their names. This is truly a gigantic historical leap - from Germany in 1517 to Atlanta, Georgia in the 1940's.

King went on to do graduate research at Boston University. His dissertation, over 200 pages long, was an analysis of the writings of a German philosopher named Paul Tillich. King's research required him to have reading knowledge of German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. King analyzed Tillich's concept of God, and compared it to the way other philosophers viewed God. King was looking for the perfect balance between a "transcendent" view of God and an "immanent" view of God; the transcendent view is more cosmic and eternal, and immanent view is more personal and relational. King believed that a balanced view of God - not moving to either extreme - would improve both individuals and societies.

Too often, the television gives us the impression that King's main activity was giving speeches and marching. In reality, he spent years of his life in libraries. King's ideals of equality and non-violence came from studying texts.

Paul Tillich was a major influence on King. King also read books by Ghandi; Ghandi, in turn, had been educated in England. It was from England that Ghandi brought to his native India ideals of non-violence and equality, and began to criticize India's "caste" system. Ghandi wanted a "Magna Carta" for India. It's ironic that to get from England to America, these ideas went through India. Ghandi wanted to import the British ideas about the dignity and value of every human life, and about civil justice, into India. He probably did not foresee, at least initially, that they would be then exported to other countries, especially to the USA.

King had also read Thoreau and Emmerson, who in turn had been educated in the seminaries of New England, mainly at Harvard, where the Bible was studied in the context of its original Greek and Hebrew grammar, and in the context of rise and fall of the major ancient empires. This mixed approach - a personal commitment to valuing each human life, a geo-political context of major world powers, and the careful examination of text - would be formative.

So we see what a wide range of texts and authors are wrapped up in the influences which enabled King to take his remarkable place in American history. We see, in his words and writings, how a Humanities education can be powerful.

Statistics, Statistics!

Most of us, at one time or another, have heard something like this: "in the Middle Ages, the average life span was shorter than forty years; today, life expectancy often reaches as high as the mid seventies."

Makes us sound pretty cool, right? I mean, with all our modern technology and science, and good medical care, we're much better off!

Well, not really.

Notice the slightly different wordings: "average life span" and "life expectancy". These are, to statisticians, two very different things.

Average life span is simply the arithmetic mean of a group of human beings, for example, those living in Europe in the Middle Ages. Some of them died as small babies, others lived to be 100 years old or more, and most were between those two extremes. Add them up, divide, and you have the average. You learned to do that in some math class.

But "life expectancy" is a little trickier. For example, the generation of Americans who fought World War Two is now over eighty years old. We look around, and see many of them still living; others have died only recently, having made it into their seventies. And so we say that this generation had a pretty good "life expectancy". But their average life span was much shorter. We forget about the hundreds of thousands who actually died in the 1940's, fighting in the Pacific against Japan. When they are factored into the group, we find that the average life span is much shorter than the life expectancy. Remember, many of those soldiers who died were under twenty years of age.

Your life expectancy is defined, roughly, as how long you can expect to live if you have already made it to a certain age, say 20 or 30, and if there are no major unforeseen catastrophes, say like a war or an earthquake.

It's not meaningful to compare a modern life expectancy to a medieval average life span. That's comparing apples to oranges.

Given that the modern life span is shorter than the modern life expectancy, maybe we're not so much better off than those folks in the Middle Ages after all.

The Backwards Revolution

Sometimes, revolutions fail to make things better; in 1959, the Cuban Communist revolution rejected American-style democracy, and promised to make things better for the "common working" man. What happened after that?

Many economic and social indicators have declined since the 1959 revolution. Pre-Castro Cuba ranked third in Latin America in per capita food consumption; today, it ranks last. Per capita consumption of cereals, tubers, and meat are today all below 1950's levels. The number of automobiles in Cuba has fallen since the 1950's - the only country in Latin America for which this is the case. The number of telephone lines in Cuba also has been virtually frozen at 1950's levels. Cuba once ranked first in Latin America and fifth in the world in television sets per capita. Today, it barely ranks fourth in Latin America and is well back in the ranks globally.

Cuba's rate of development of electrical power since the 1950’s ranks behind every other country in Latin America except Haiti. Cuba is the only country in the hemisphere for which rice production today is lower than it was four decades ago.

Cuba's infant mortality rate of 32 per 1,000 live births in 1957 was the lowest in Latin America and the 13th lowest in the world, according to UN data. Cuba ranked ahead of France, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, all of which would eventually pass Cuba in this indicator during the following decades. Cuba's world ranking has fallen from 13th to 24th during the Castro era, according to UN Data.

Japan, with four cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 1958, was far behind Cuba (24) that year, but by 1988, Japan's number had grown to 251, whereas the figure for Cuba remained frozen at its 1958 level. Similar comments could be made for Portugal (increased from fifteen in 1958 to 216 in 1988), Spain (increased from six to 278), and Greece (increased from four to 150). Indeed, Italy's 29 cars per thousand was not far ahead of Cuba's 24 in 1958, but by 1988, Italy boasted 440 cars per thousand, whereas the figure for Cuba was unchanged from the 1950's.

Today, Cuba has only three telephone lines per 100 people, placing it 14th out of twenty Latin American countries surveyed in 1994 and far behind countries that were less advanced than Cuba in this measure in 1958, such as Argentina (today 14 lines per 100 inhabitants), Costa Rica (13), Panama (11), Chile (11), Venezuela (11), and several others.

During the late 1950's, Cuba ranked second only to Uruguay in Latin America, with 169 radios per 1,000 people. (Worldwide, this put Cuba just ahead of Japan.) At that time, Argentina and Cuba were very similar in terms of this measure. Since then, the number of radios per capita in Argentina has grown three times as fast as in Cuba. Cuba also has been surpassed by Bolivia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, and Brazil in this indicator.

Cuba had 45 television sets per 1,000 inhabitants in 1957, by far the most in Latin America and fifth in the world, behind only Monaco, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In fact, its closest competitor in Latin America was Venezuela, which had only sixteen television sets per 1,000 people. Today, Cuba has 170 televisions per thousand, behind Uruguay (232 per thousand), Argentina (220), and Brazil (209). Of these three countries, Uruguay in 1957 had less than one television per 1,000 people, and Argentina and Brazil each had five per 1,000 people.

Although Cuba has never been a regional leader in public electricity production per capita, its relative ranking among twenty Latin American countries has fallen from eighth to 11th during the Castro era. In fact, in terms of the rate of growth for this measure, Cuba ranks 19th of twenty countries in the region, with only Haiti showing less accelerated development.

Cuba is the only country in Latin America whose production of rice has fallen since 1958, when it ranked fourth in the region in production of this staple.

Cubans had a choice of 58 daily newspapers during the late 1950's, according to the UN statistical yearbook. Despite its small size, this placed Cuba behind only Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in the region. By 1992, government controls had reduced the number of dailies to only seventeen.

A Short Snooze for a Short Emperor: Napoleon's Naps

From the time of his self-appointment to the first consulship in 1799, Napoleon had constructed for himself folding field-bed out of iron. On all campaigns and field manouvers, he took one along: either a small one on the back of a mule, or a larger one on a supply wagon. But even when he slept on something more comfortable, Napoleon slept only a short time. Allegedly, he never remained in bed for any longer than four hours at a time. He didn't like those who slept for long periods of time. Sleep experts celebrate him today as a pioneer of the "power-nap", an energizing short snooze. Accordingly, Napoleon is supposed to have slept briefly several times a day - for example, when commanding. Sometimes even during a battle!

Peace in the Middle East?

The recent "heating up" of military action in the area of Israel and Lebanon has brought the ancient conflicts of the Middle East to the forefront again.

Many American politicians are debating about the best way to make peace - but their debates are founded on the presupposition that peace is possible in this situation, and that is an assumption which we must examine more carefully.

First, let's define peace. If, by that word, we mean merely the absense of violence, the lack of shooting, then, yes, peace in the Middle East is possible. Either by diplomacy or by force, it is possible to create a cease-fire, an uneasy and tenuous truce; this can be done by the involved parties themselves, or by external forces. It has been done before.

But if we mean, by the word peace, something more than an imposed restraint on military action, if we mean, perhaps, the creation of a political stable equalibrium, and the conviction on the parts of all involved parties that an even-handed solution to the underlying conflicts has been reached, then one begins to wonder if "peace" is at all possible in the Middle East.

Remember that this recent round of fighting is simply a continuation of fighting that has been going on since 1948. Remember that the fighting that began in 1948 is merely a continuation of the fighting that has been going on since around 1500 B.C.; indeed, the ancient accounts are shockingly similar to today's headlines: the same towns and countries are mentioned, armies move along the same roads.

For those who want to reduce all Middle Eastern conflict to the Israeli situation, remember that this part of the world has hosted nearly ceaseless conflict over the last fifteen centuries between Arab nations, between Islamic nations, even when there was no Jewish state present, even when the number of ethnic Jews living in the region was insignificant, and even when Europe and America didn't intervene in any way.

This part of the world is used to constant warfare as a way of life. They have fought for centuries. One wonders if any rational articulation of the reasons is at all still possible.

Thus it may be foolish to think that the United Nations, or the United States, can intervene with a "peace plan", and resolve the tensions and create a non-agressive co-existence.

Why has a reasonable and fair peace been possible in Europe following WWII? Europe has enjoyed sixty years of peace, interrupted only by the civil war as Yugoslavia disintegrated into six or seven separate nations. The periodic attacks by Soviet soldiers on unarmed civilians were not military wars, but massacres, and fall into a different category. Why the stability and peace in Europe, but not in the Middle East? For the answer, we must examine the underlying cultures and worldviews.

Tristan and Isolde

The ancient story, and recent film, about Tristan and Isolde is one well worth studying. This narrative has inspired poets, composers, and painters over the centuries, leaving us with many different versions of the same basic plot.

But don't be confused: this is not merely a love story. This is an account of the political upheavals caused by the fall of the Roman Empire, and of the beginnings of English national identity. The effort to unite a handful of independent tribes into what would become England, and the struggle between these collected tribes and the Irish, formed the geo-politics of Europe for several centuries. Understanding this story is understanding what England is, how it arose, and what the authentic English identity was prior to 1066. But 1066 is another story.

Going Native

When the British oversaw an empire "on which the sun never sets" - meaning that, because it had large territories around the world, it was always daylight somewhere in the empire - they used the phrase "going native" to describe a certain phenomenon: when an Englishman, sent to work in one of the colonies, would be begin to adapt himself to the ways of the local cultures. An British man who began to dress according to local fashions, converse with the natives, eat their type food, perhaps marry a local woman, learn their languages, and - the ultimate step - begin to identify with them instead of with his fellow Englishmen and to see things from their point of view, they said that he had "gone native."

Now, to be sure, this was sometimes a negative evaluation, and sometimes merely a neutral observation.

The British Empire has faded away, but this concept can help us to understand a current situation.

The politics of the Middle East are very complicated, and it would be foolish to think that they could be completely explained in one small blog posting. How can one ever completely analyze the intricacies of Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Syria, Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt, with their various languages, cultures, religions, and histories? No, I will not present a comprehensive examination of the entire political situation in the Near East.

But I will examine one small part of this big puzzle.

In 1948, when the modern state of Israel was organized, it was done for several different reasons: one of them a hope to transplant a handful of European Jews, and with them, the western concept of democracy, and of a democratic republic; the hope was that these concepts would take root in the Middle East, and spread the notion of this type of government and society. The dream was that the Near East would begin to look like Europe, and that the nations there would begin to operate on a basis which would allow them to make peace with each other, and with the rest of the world, and to enter into a more normalized relation with the states in the rest of the world. The modern state of Israel was supposed to be a "seed" of a modern democracy republic in the region.

That was one thought behind the founding of the nation. There were others, perhaps more important, or at least more dominate, which we will not discuss here.

How did matters fare? Well, there will be different interpretations of the last fifty years of world history, but one interpretation is to say that some of those European Jews, who were to plant democracy in the region, "went native" - that is to say, instead of changing the region, the region changed them. They may have adopted the ancient attitudes of the Near East, attitudes alien to democratic republics, even alien to the peculiar way in which western civilizations value human life, and value peace over war.

The Middle East, at war for centuries, is, or has become, comfortable with war as a way of life; this is a a worldview which is at odds with Eurocentric ideologies, a worldview in which human life is not necessarily extremely valuable.

Have some of the citizens of modern Israel adopted this viewpoint - have they "gone native"?

Definitions are Everything!

What do Jesus and Karl Marx have in common? Well, to start with, they were both Jewish, and they both were Communists. That may startle you, but this shocking statement also depends on how you define "Jewish" and "Communist" - and reminds us that definitions are the key to understanding confusing episodes of both history and philosophy.

Jesus was spiritually, culturally, and genetically Jewish; Karl Marx merely happened to have Jewish grandparents; so they were both "Jewish", but in very different senses of the word. Jesus inspired his followers to put their money and material possessions into a common treasury, and share equally from it; this would qualify him as a "Communist" - but in a very different sense than Marx. Marx's version of Communism relied on the government as the ultimate power, on material objects as the ultimate reality, and on atheism as the ultimate belief. Jesus, to say the least, was not an atheist.

Many politicians are debating about "immigrants" now - but we must first define whether we are talking about legal or illegal immigrants.

Biologists are discussing "stem cells" these days - but are they examing those taken from adults, or from unborn babies?

It is precisely in these topics - the most emotional, passionate, and political themes - that we must focus most carefully on the definitions of words. Only then can we speak more rationally.

An atheist once attacked a philosopher with the often-repeated question, "can you really prove that God exists?" The philosopher, tired of the game, returned with a question, "can you even define the word 'God'?"

Patterns in History

Over the years, different historians have found - or have claimed to find - recurring patterns in world history. Alexander Fraser Tytler, also known as Lord Woodhouselee, a Scottish history professor, writing in the 1780's, examined the rise and fall of Athens, and concluded: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

Tytler continued, noting that civilizations tend to develop until they hit their high points, and remain at that high point for an average of two centuries: “The average age of the world's greatest civilizations, from the beginning of history, has been about two hundred years. During those two hundred years, these nations always progressed through the following” sequence:

The attribution of this eight-step cycle to Tytler has been questioned. There are reasonable suggestions that someone else wrote these words, and that they were later attributed to Tytler. In any case, the ideas remain interesting, no matter who wrote them:

1. From the bondage of supersition, myth, and pagan magic into the freedom of spiritual faith.

2. From spiritual faith into great courage, motivated by that faith.

3. From courage to liberty, bought and protected by that courage.

4. From liberty to abundance, attained by diligent application of that liberty.

5. From abundance to complacency.

6. From complacancy to apathy.

7. From apathy to dependence.

8. From dependence back into bondage."

Do you agree with Tytler's analysis? Can you think of specific, concrete examples in ancient or modern history to support his general conclusions?

Evaluating a Pope

For more than a thousand years, popes have been playing an influential role in world history. From the Reformation to the Fall of the Iron Curtain, the top officer of the Roman Catholic church is a player in culture and civilization. Some popes are very famous, others almost unknown. But how do you evaluate a pope?

Well, if you happen to be an actual, practicing Roman Catholic, as opposed to those millions who merely called themselves Roman Catholics, you'll have to figure this out on your own. Because as an "insider", you will evaluate a pope as an internal matter, from within the framework of the Roman Catholic church. I can't help you on this one.

I, the author of this blog, happen to be an outsider, i.e., I am not a Roman Catholic, and so have an external perspective on a pope. So, if you happen to be an outsider as well, how do we evaluate a pope?

The first step is to gather information. This is not easy, because almost everyone who writes about a pope has a "spin" which they are trying to inflict on the reading public. Anything written from within the Roman Catholic church will give us glowing reports about the pope, making him seem like Superman, talented and skilled in every manner, and seemingly without flaw. Most articles written from outside the Roman Catholic church are from organizations, like Time, Newsweek, or The New York Times, which have the clear purpose of opposing the pope, and so will make each of his actions seem like a blunder or mistake, and interpret every speech as proof of either ignorance or ill will.

How, then, can we accurate information about a pope, if the sources are explicitly skewed, either for him or against him?

The clearest picture of a pope can perhaps be gained by letting him speak for himself. Every recent pope has written a number of books, both before and after becoming pope. These texts will show us what was on his mind, and will show us if he changed his mind in any way after becoming pope. Admittedly, such documents may difficult to read, but getting to an actual, objective truth is usually hard work. Reading propaganda is easy.

So, ignore the books written by monks and nuns, designed to make a pope look good; and ignore The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and the TV reports on ABC, NBC, CNN, and CBS, which are composed to make the pope look bad. Both are equally biased. Instead, see what he himself has written.

Jus Primae Noctis

From opera (Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro) to Hollywood (Braveheart), the notion of jus primae noctis has been a great dramatic device, because it inspire's the deepest sense of outrage at injustice in the viewer, and the dramatic energy is enough to propel the plot forward. It is part of the larger pattern of many great dramas to posit a horrific injustice, which energizes the forward action of the storyline as the protagonists attempt to restore justice.

For those who don't know, jus primae noctis is a legal term for the right of the local nobility (usually a count, or a duke, or a baron; originally a feudal lord in earlier times) to be the first man to sleep with any girl on the night of her wedding before she is allowed to sleep with her husband.

Despite the depth of the outrage which this phrase invokes, and despite the high profile which it has attained in literature and other art forms, one question remains: did this ever actually happen in real life?

According to most historians, the answer is no. Although history knows many examples of aristocrats who used their influence to seduce, or rape, girls in their territories, there seem to be no recorded examples of a royal who attempted to codify this as law, or who attempted to systematically carry out this idea. It seems to be a powerful, but ficticious, literary invention. Sociologists have noted that, if anybody had ever actually tried to institute this as a legal practice, he probably would have been quickly assassinated.

The Home of Modern Science

What we call science, or, more properly, natural science, has been around at least since Aristotle started organizing categories of animals and thereby founded biology.

But science was re-started, and what we call modern science arose and found its home in Europe during the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era. Astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and the mathematical infrastructure needed to form them constituted a new era in scientific thinking, an era which continues to this day. But why did this happen in Europe, and not somewhere else in the world?

European culture in the late Middle Ages had reached a point, after several centuries, at which it could clearly formulate six ideas which contributed to a scientific mindset:

[1] The physical world is real, not an illusion. Many non-European cultures had embraced a philosophy which taught that the physical world is an illusion. Eurpean philosophers taught that the world is real and can be known. This assumption primed Western thinkers to value the physical world and to consider it worthy of study.

[2] Nature is good but not divine. Many primitive cultures held animistic beliefs, which taught that the world is the home of the divine or an emanation of God's own essence. Consequently, they believe that nature is alive with sun gods, river goddesses, and astral deities. Eurpean philosophers taught that the sun and the moon are not gods; historians call this the "de-deification" of nature; nature is not to be worshipped, it is to be studied.

[3] Nature is orderly and predictable. Another unique contribution of European thought was the ideas of the laws of nature. Nobody had ever before used the word "law" in relation to nature. Many other cultures had regarded nature as mysterious, dangerous, and chaotic. Early scientists acted on the belief that nature is orderly, before they had amassed enough evidence to prove it. Modern physics is based on the ideas that the universe is rational because it is understandable, uniform because laws like gravity operate in the same way on different planets, and organized according to the laws of mathematics.

[4] Humans can discover nature's order. Early scientists acted on the hypothesis that the order in nature can be discovered by the human mind. The ancient Chinese, by comparison, believed that the order of nature was inscrutable to the human mind; so they never developed science as a self-correcting, experimental enterprise.

[5] We need to experiment. The ancient Greeks had organized natural sciences, like Aristotle's biology, as a largely reflective effort. They thought about biology, but they did not investigate biology.

[6] The order in nature is mathematically precise. Modern science depends on the idea that the order in nature is precise and can be expressed in mathematical formulas; European thought did not see nature as random or haphazard, but rather structured and organized by equations.

These six ideas formed a culture which was the ideal place for a new set of scientific breakthroughs. This is how culture relates to science.

The Most Superlative

It is not unusual to hear or read statements like, "Alexander the Great was an excellent tactian and strategist" or "the Magna Carta was formative" or "the Thirty Years War was devastating." These types of propositions are routine in history, and are no problem, if you can support them by citing specific facts: "Alexander the Great was an excellent tactician and strategist because he managed to invade and conquer Greece, Persia, and Egypt" or "the Magna Carta was formative because it has shaped not only the government of England, but also the governments of several other nations (USA, Canada, Australia), and has exerted this influence continually over the last 800 years" or "the Thirty Years War was devastating because more people died in it than in any other war prior to 1914." General statements are fine, if they are supported by specific facts.

What are, however, much more problematic, are superlative generalizations. To say that "Alexander the Great was the most excellent tactician and strategist" is very hard to prove: what about Napoleon or Ulyses Grant? To write that "the Magna Carta was the most formative political document every written" is difficult to support: what about the Ten Commandments, or the Declaration of Independence?

So be very careful when using superlatives: "the most" or "the greatest" can get you into trouble. Much safer are "one of the greatest" or "one of the most"; but they still need to be supported by citing details.

The Queen and the Philosopher

One of the most famous rulers of Sweden was Queen Kristina (often spelled in the English way, “Christina”). She not only governed Sweden during an era that was historically important, but she also interacted with some of the most important people of her time.

In 1646, she began to write letters to Rene Descartes, the French thinker who almost single-handedly began modern rationalist philosophy. They discuss love, ethics, God, and creation; she is interested in his Roman Catholic views: she is, like 99% of Swedes, Lutheran.

In 1648, she will play a leading role in the negotiations which bring an end to the Thirty Years War, and bring peace to Europe. The negotiations are held in a church in Germany. Some people praise her for bringing peace; others will condemn her, because the war ended badly for Sweden. Until this time, Sweden had been very powerful in European politics and economics; after this time, Sweden will be less significant.

In 1650, Queen Christina invites Descartes to Stockholm, so that they can discuss philosophy together. She wants to meet with him every morning at 5:00 am in a poorly-heated room in her palace; in order to do this, he must arise at 3:30 am, because the house where is he staying is more than an hour's journey away. He contracts pneumonia and dies.

After a series of secret letters to Jesuits, discussing the Roman Catholic faith, she abdicates in 1654, and travels to Rome, where she officially converts to Roman Catholocism and meets with the pope in 1655. She will remain active in European politics, travelling through France, Sweden, Italy, and elsewhere. She will continue her interest in philosophy, and the impact of philosophy on astronomy, carrying with her the influence of Descartes.

Jewish Women - Makers of History

To consciously scan history for women who made a difference is a project worth doing; whether or not there is some patriarchal bias in history, the point stands as valid that history has been shaped by men as well as women. This is true in all areas of history; today we'll draw our examples from Jewish events. Some reminders:

It was a woman who ...

Risked her life to protect Moses at a time when Egyptians were engaging in "ethnic cleansing" by killing Hebrew baby boys.

Protected the Israelite spies in the city of Jericho, gave them information, and helped them to escape, making possible the Israelite invasion.

Led the Israelites to victory in battle, advising and eventually replacing the military leader Barak.

Kept the prophet Elijah alive by giving him provisions when there was no other food to found.

Crystalized the concept of devotion in the words, "wither you go, I will go, and your God will be my God."

Risked her life, confronting the Persian king to whom she was married, to save her nation from destruction.

Was cited by Jesus as demonstrating altruism when she donated an absolutely small, but relatively large, sum.

Shattered an alabaster container to pour perfume on Jesus, a radical act at the time.

Wetted the feet of Jesus with her tears, in a symbolic gesture.

Embraced the concept of mystery and elucidated the concept of the divine incarnation.

The women listed above changed history, and had they not played the roles they did, our culture and civilization today would different beyond recognition - all manner of art, music, philosophy, and politics would have taken radically divergent paths without the influence of these historic Jewish women.

Categorizing Worldviews

Different scholars develop various systems for keeping track of beliefs; here's one:

You can picture this as a 6 x 10 grid, with six worldviews on one axis, and ten topics on the other. Each cell in the spreadsheet would then contain a statement about what one of those worldviews has to say about the topic.

The six worldviews are: Christianity, Islam, Secular Humanism, Cosmic Humanism, Marxism-Leninism, and Post-Modernism.

The ten topics would be: theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics, and history.

Try to sketch this chart for yourself, and fill in the cells. Then ask yourself: Could there be more worldviews? Who are the authors and texts that define each worldview? Are there better ways to keep track of worldviews?

Judging the Quality of a Speech

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address, a speech which is not only significant because of its historical context at the turning point in one of the most important wars in the history of the world - and the single most noteworthy war in the history of the United States - but which is also a masterpiece of language.

Lincoln was sandwiched between several other speeches which were given that day by other politicians. These other speakers each spoke for approximately an hour, making a long day of it. Lincoln, by contrast, probably took about two minutes for his oration!

Editorializing about the event, The Chicago Sun wrote: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame, as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."

Today, textbooks around the world cite Lincoln's work as a paradigmatic example of the English language!

Playing Victim

One distinctive aspect of our civilization is its concern for those who are vulnerable in society. Our culture has been marked by this trend ever since Moses, who gave special legal advantages to the weaker classes: widows, orphans, the poor, and the foreigners. This is the basis for many aspects of modern social structures, including welfare systems, and extends even to sports: Americans love to “root for the underdog” when a lesser-known team takes on a powerful opponent.

As Nietzsche pointed out, other cultures do not share this inclination: other cultures consider it appropriate to exploit the poor and weak, and to take advantage of those who are vulnerable. Outside of our civilization, it is considered an unusual thing to want to help those in need. Some varieties of Hinduism and Buddhism even reject the idea of relieving the suffering of others, because they have been fated to endure such suffering to pay off the sins of their previous lives. By helping them, you would be helping them to unjustly escape their punishments, and condemning them to suffer more in the next life because they didn't suffer enough in this one.

Although it is generally a good thing that our society wants to help those who are defenseless, there is one drawback: our society can be fooled into helping those who merely claim to be victims, but who in reality suffer no disadvantage.

To be sure, it is not really a big problem if a man takes a meal from a homeless shelter when he's actually not so poor. It may be immoral, but society isn't harmed by his deception. He has exploited our society's desire to help the weak, but the damage to society at large is not great.

Another example of this principle is the trend of faking “hate crimes”. Desiring to help those who are oppressed by racism or cultural prejudice, our society wants to prevent crimes based on a person's skin color or nationality. But some individuals have seen a chance to exploit this system by filing reports of crimes which never took place, in order to gain sympathy for themselves and their political causes.

In U.S. News and World Report, the University of Georgia revealed that a resident assistant in a dormitory had filed nine police reports, claiming to have been the victim of nine separate attacks because he was a homosexual. When the police began to investigate the incidents, he confessed that he had faked them, because he wanted to create the impression that homosexuals were victims.

The French newspaper Le Groupe National carried the story of Edward Drago, a student at the College of New Jersey, sent death threats to himself, and to a homosexual student group to which he belonged. He confessed to faking the death threats, trying to get publicity for his student club.

At St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, a lesbian student used a razor blade to cut her own face; she reported to the police that she had been attacked. When the police discovered that she had faked the attack, she told the U.S. News and World Report that she had done it in order to help raise funds for a pro-homosexual student group.

The same article revealed that a lesbian at Eastern New Mexico State University told the police that her name had been posted by an “anti-gay hate group”, and that she had then later been physically attacked because her name was publicized. The police discovered that she had posted the list herself, that there was no “anti-gay hate group”, and that she had faked the physical assalt as well.

In joint reporting between World magazine and AZcentral web news, it was revealed that a lebsian had hired a homosexual man to beat her, so then she could tell the police that she was the victim of a “hate crime”.

In a California high school, a student faked a series of “gay-bashing” incidents, including grafiti on lockers and cars, and eggs being thrown at students and their houses. The Los Angeles Times discovered that these actions had actually been done by the school's Gay-Straight Alliance.

Because this tactic of gaining sympathy is based on our culture, it is found outside the U.S. in other countries which share our cultural roots. In England and Europe, the police have reported faked hate crimes.

One of our civilization's strengths is its conern for the down-trodden, and we should not give up this precious aspect of our society. But we must be aware that it can be exploited by political groups, who present themselves as vicitms in order to gain sympathy - and power.

The Other Van Gogh

Most of us are familiar with Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch painter. Less famous is his relative, Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker, who was brutally murdered on November 2, 2004.

Theo van Gogh was murdered because of his art. He had made a documentary film about the treatment of women in Islamic societies. He questioned whether it was appropriate for Muslim leaders to continue to repeat advice, found in the Qur'an, that husbands should beat their wives if they wives fail to obey. Theo van Gogh also documented how Islam prevented women from attending school and gaining an education.

On the morning of his death, Theo was riding his bicycle to work. Muslim gunmen, who were waiting for him, opened fire; he was hit several times, and fatally wounded. Not content with killing him, the assassins stabbed him with a knife, and then used the knife to attach a five-page note to Theo's body. The note stated that the governments of Europe were the object of "jihad", and listed specific government leaders in Holland who would be targeted for assassination.

It seems that more than one member of the van Gogh family produced turbulent art, and faced a tragic death.

Arguing about Darwinism

Most of us are by now familiar with the usual discussions about evolution: the hard-core Creationists dogmatically assert that the universe as we know was created in six twenty-four hour days, six thousand years ago; the hard-core Darwinists dogmatically assert that life was spontaneously generated out of lifeless random chemicals billions of years ago. This type of debate has been going on for approximately two hundred years now.

Is there a third option? Increasing numbers of professors are embracing a view which, through observation and induction, frames the hypothesis that life is not the result of random coincidences.

At universities and colleges like Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Vanderbilt, Duke, Tulane, and all eleven of the Big Ten schools, professors in departments such as Astro-Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Genetics, Embrology, Dendrology, Bio-Chemistry, and Quantum Mechanics are being attacked by university presidents and administrators because they are skeptical about Darwinism.

Five hundred of them signed a petition, stating that they "are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

Althought they are being punished for questioning the claims of Darwinism, this group of researchers may be opening up a "third option" in a debate that has been locked up between two sides.

Who Are You?

When asked, "who are you?", many people will reply with "I work at IBM," or "I live in Detroit," or "I write software," or "I come from Wisconsin." But these answers don't really address the question. (You may recognize the comedy bit from the movie "Anger Management".) If you tell me what you do, or where you live, that doesn't really tell me who you are.

In Denmark, in the 1840's, the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard struggled with this question. He decided that the real answers to these questions lay in the meaningful and significant choices you make. Who you are is shown by how you make decisions, and the most consequential decisions are made in the context of relationships. Kierkegaard would happily grant that, if you are standing by yourself in front of a machine, faced with the question of "Coke or Pepsi?", you can indeed make a free choice; but it is not a significant choice. The meaningful decisions are those which impact other humans, and which impact your relationship to those other humans. Those decisions reveal who you are.

So Kierkegaard would answer the question "who are you?" by saying, "I am a friend, a brother or sister, a son or daughter, a neighbor, etc." The answer to "who are you?" is not found in your education, your job, or your athletic record. It is found in the way you interact with other humans. Granted, you may interact with them in the course of your job, your education, or your athletic involvement.

Kierkegaard also points out that the ultimate relationship is one's relationship to God. The manner in which you deal with God shows something about who you are. Kierkegaard is known as the founder of existentialism.

Avoiding Fascism

In the course of analyzing fascism, we noted that fascism avoids free market capitalism. This kind of laissez-faire economics is not compatible with the fascist's desire for control.

We also learned that fascist politics are dominated by militarism; instead of the political process directing the military, the military controls the political structure. In the words of the famous French leader during World War One, "war is too important to be left to the generals."

These two general principles can be applied to the United States. If we continue to allow our economy to function freely, without interference or regulation by the government, and if we make sure that our politicians direct the military, instead of the military directing the politicians, then we can avoid fascism.

Edmund Burke and Richard Nixon

What does the U.S. president from 1969 to 1974 have to do with the Irish-English political philosopher who analyzed the American and French Revolutions? Nixon's administration was brought down in a scandal, and he became the first - and, so far, only - president to resign.

Reflecting on Nixon's demise, one of his aides, Charles Colson, later commented that these events evoked from him a “frank acknowledgement of the human disposition to make wrong moral choices and inflict harm and suffering on others.” The official concluded that this observation is “empirically validated by thirty-five centuries of recorded human history.”

Responding to those who hope to refine our political system so that such scandals never happen again, Colson wrote, this “worldview has proven to be utterly irrational and unlivable. The denial of our sinful nature, and the utopian myth it breeds, leads not to beneficial social experiments but to tyranny. The confidence that humans are perfectible provides a justification for trying to them perfect ... no matter what it takes. And with God out of the picture, those in power are not accountable to any higher authority. They can use any means necessary, no matter how brutal or coercive, to remold people to fit their notion of the perfect society.”

Not only can we not fine-tune our system in order to avoid all future mis-uses of power, but it is exactly such an attempt which leads to the abuse of power, because this attempt to protect people from bad rulers is carried out by giving total control to the rulers.

The notion that humans and human society are perfectible entails, and is entailed by, the denial of any concept of natural law and the rejection of any standards of good and bad. But it is exactly this concept and these standards which have “historically proven to be the most dependable defender of human liberty,” according to Colson. “The commitment to a higher law,” he continues, puts one “on the front lines in resisting laws or actions contrary to that law.” It was Nixon's belief in the ultimate value of his own ability to organize a good society, his belief that his programs would be a great step forward for the nation, which caused him to decide to violate laws; if Nixon could truly create a little piece of utopia, then it would be OK to break a law or two to achieve this, right?

This “view was argued eloquently by the British statesman Edmund Burke during a famous 1788 debate in the House of Lords over the impeachment of the governor general of India. The governor general had claimed a right to arbitrary authority over the unruly nationals, arguing that they were, after all, used to despotism. Burke replied with these wonderful words: ‘My lords, the East India Company have not arbitrary power to give him [the governor general]. The king has no arbitrary power to give. Neither your lordships, nor the Commons, nor the whole legislature, have arbitrary power to give. Arbitrary power is a thing which no man can give ... We are all born, high as well as low, governors as well as governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, preexisting law ... This great law does not arise from our combinations and compacts; on the contrary, it gives to them all the sanctions they can have.’”

Burke, and Colson who here quotes him, points out the two-fold danger of utopian thinking: first, it justifies “by any means necessary” thinking, for if we can truly create a wonderful utopia here and now on earth, then it would certainly be worth breaking a few rules to get there, or even killing a few people to create a paradise for the human race; second, it places absolute power in the hands of a few people, or even one person, who has the alleged vision and knowledge about how to create this utopia, because that person has to control all the variables of society carefully and precisely in order to form the perfect organization.

Behind this kind of thinking, Nixon's aide continues, is the “notion that human nature is essentially good ... Utopianism says: if only we create the right social and economic structures, we can usher in an age of harmony and prosperity. But Christians can never give their allegiance to utopian projects.”

Burke had a realistic view of human nature. Humans are wonderful, rational, skilled, and creative, but they are not perfect. Humans will, from time to time, fail. They will sometimes choose evil instead of good. They will sometimes seek to harm instead of help, sometimes be selfish instead of selfless.

Burke rejected the type of view held by Hobbes, in which human nature is only selfish and violent; but he also rejected the views of Rousseau, which said that humans are naturally good. Burke saw humans as a mixed picture, sometimes doing good, and sometimes evil.

If we lose sight of the fact that humans are limited, if we trust too much in human plans and project, we end up at Watergate: Nixon's aide momentarily lost sight of those basic principles we call “rule of law” and “natural law”, and followed the president into the scandal; when it all came undone, he commented that “the human propensity to evil and disorder must be hemmed in by law and tradition.” Burke would have agreed.

Procter and Gamble and Racism and Class Warfare

Before we go any further, this posting is NOT asking anybody to boycott anything. I am not writing about the Procter and Gamble corporation; I am writing about the private activities of the owners and operators, and their families. You may go ahead and buy your soap in peace.

One of the founders of P&G was Clarence Gamble. In addition to selling soap, Mr. Gamble was also a hard-core racist. Having made his millions, he sought ways to fund his quest for racial purity. Enter Margaret Sanger and her organization, Planned Parenthood. She devised a scheme known as the "Negro Project", with the stated goal of reducing the birthrate among African-Americans. Gamble funded it generously.

This was part of a larger social movement at the time known as "Eugenics", the desire and attempt to control human breeding so that only the "best" and "fittest" people would procreate. There were various forms of Eugenics, from state eugenics (controlled by the government in the interests of the state), to vicious quests for "racial purity". Margaret Sanger would go on to be invited by the KKK to speak at one of their rallies; she happily accepted the invitation, and considered her speech there a success.

The Gamble family's racist quest continued into the next generation: Sarah Gamble Epstein, Clarence's daughter, publicly defends and supports the government of mainland communist China and its program of forced abortion against the will of pregnant women. She states that Americans should be "praising China for looking forward", and that Chinese women should know that it is "both patriotic and beneficial" to cooperate with the government's program of involuntary abortions.

Other financial leaders were involved in funding racist schemes: the Carnegie Institute, founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie, funded the work of Charles Davenport, who took eugenics into the sphere of government policy. Following the ideas of Francis Galton, who first proposed the intentional breeding of humans, Davenport, and his assistant, Harry Laughlin, encouraged the U.S. government to reduce the immigration quotas for those seen as "racially inferior", including Jews. This was during the 1930's, when Hitler was gearing up for the Holocaust, which would begin in 1938. Jews who might have lived were denied admission to the U.S. and forced to remain in Germany. Laughlin praised the Nazi policies of enforced sterilization and breeding, and received an honorary doctorate in eugenics from the Nazi government.

Wesley Smith, an opponent of eugenics, writes that "eugenics springs from a poisoned intellectual well. The very idea that we have the right to decide which human traits to enhance and which to eradicate is what leads to trouble. Social pressures can oppress even without formal government actions. Besides, if the new eugenics became popular, it wouldn't take long for politicians to get into the act." The "new eugenics" to which Smith refers are the attempts at genetic engineering, combined with decisions based on pre-natal testing.

Author Harry Brunius asks, "what is the foundation of human dignity ... ? Or, more precisely, what is the ... basis for individual rights ... ?"

The Massacre at Chios

The French painter Eugene Delacroix immortalized the Massacre at Chios; this is one of his most famous paintings. The painting was originally exhibited in 1824, and purchased at that time by Charles X, king of France, for the Louvre museum. As a work of art, the painting has earned a place in history.

The picture also serves as a history lesson. The Massacre at Chios occurred in 1822. The Islamic armies of the Ottoman Empire were attacking Greece. These armies, launched from Turkey, encountered the small island of Chios on their way to Greece. Here, it became clear what their intent was. The island was not only a military objective, but also an example of the kind of human subjugation envisioned by the Muslim attempt at expansion. The women of the island were subjected to systematic mass rape; large numbers of the population were executed.

The events at Chios awakened Europe to the inhumane terror which was threatening, once again, to invade. Delacroix's painting was a wake-up call.

Pretzels, Bagels, and Culture

Approximately two thousand years ago, central Europe was the home of the Germanic tribes. The Roman expansion in Europe never succeeded in establishing a permanent foothold in the area north of the Danube and east of the Rhine, leaving this region as one of the few truly independent cultural centers of Europe.

These Germanic tribes - they were not Germans, though some of them would later be - gave us many cultural treasures, including literary masterpieces like the Icelandic Sagas, or the Nibelungen; they also gave us the basis of the English language. English, as students of Beowulf know, is derived largely from Germanic dialects like Saxon and Frisian, and only a few English vocabulary items came from Latin.

These founders of what would later become several nations - Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Prussia, Austria, Flanders, Iceland, and kingdoms like Saxony, Bavaria, Hessen, etc. - were innovators and experimenters. One interesting practice which they began was the boiling of a solution of lye and water. Lye is a caustic and dangerous chemical, sodium hydroxide, NaOH. This boiling mixture is toxic if consumed, and causes chemical burns on human skin. But into this liquid, they tossed lumps of bread dough. Scooping them out of vat, these lumps were then baked, often with salt. The lye was rendered non-toxic by the baking and by reacting with the bread dough, but it left a distinctive and pleasurable taste, and a glossy brown surface.

A few centuries later, the Germanic tribes would be exposed to the belief systems of Christianity and Judaism. This caused them to give up their habit of sacrificing humans on stone altars to the Germanic pagan divinities. But they didn't give up their lye.

Those Germanic tribes who converted to Christianity began to form their bread dough into the distinctive shape we now know as a "pretzel"; the Jews who settled in the area learned the practice from their Germanic neighbors, but opted for a simpler, circular shape - a bagel, from the Germanic word meaning "circle".

Newton vs. Leibniz

The intense debate between Leibniz and Newton about the nature of space-time has impacted the nature of physics to this day.

Leibniz writes that “space-time” (i.e., space and time) does not have an independent, real existence of its own. Rather, it exists only relative to objects. If we removed all energy and matter from the universe, there would be no space or time, Leibniz writes.

Newton writes that space-time is real, that it has an existence all of its own, independent of material objects. So Newton writes that if we removed all matter and energy from the universe, we would be left with empty space and empty time.

Leibniz writes that there is no such thing as “empty space-time”, and produces the following argument for this view. If, Leibniz says, we moved everything in the universe five feet in one direction, there would be no discernable difference between the state affairs before the move and the state of affairs after the move. Thus, Leibniz continues, there is no absolute location, but rather, location is merely relative. Therefore, space-time exists merely relative to objects, and does not have a real independent existence of its own.

Newton disagrees. Newton writes that, if we removed all matter and energy from the universe, and in its place we placed a bucket of water, and then we gradually begin to spin that bucket of water, eventually the water would spill over the edge. This would prove that the bucket is spinning. But, if the universe were devoid of all matter and energy in this experiment, the bucket would have to be spinning relative to something, and, Newton continues, that “something” would be the absolute, independently-existing space-time matrix.

Newton later revised this thought experiment to go as follows: in a universe emptied of all matter and energy, place two rocks connected by a string. If we spin these rocks around an axis point between them, tension will be detected on the string. This would prove that the rocks are indeed spinning. But they must be spinning relative to something, which would be the absolute independently-existing space-time matrix.

A very good account of this debate, describing both sides, can be found the following book:

Author: Sklar, Lawrence
Title: Space, Time, and Spacetime
Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1974, 1976, 1977
ISBN 0-520-03174-1

The book was written by a professor at the U of M, and is used in U of M physics courses. I strongly recommend this book. The section on the Leibniz-Newton debate is only part of the book; it discusses many other topics.

If you are taking a physics course this semester, you might ask your physics teacher about this.

So, who was correct? Leibniz or Newton?

J.S. Bach in Michigan?

Once, when an acquaintance praised Bach's wonderful skill as an organist, he replied with characteristic humility and wit, "there is nothing very wonderful about it. You have only to hit the right notes at the right moment, and the instrument does the rest."

Bach had twenty children. The love he felt for his large family is evident in a heartrending letter Bach wrote on behalf of an erring son who had incurred large debts and then left his town: "What can I do or say more, my warnings having failed, and my loving care and help having proved unavailing? I can only bear my cross in patience and commend my undutiful boy to God's mercy, never doubting that He will hear my sorrow-stricken prayer and in His good time bring my son to understand that the path of coversion leads to Him."

As Dr. Ingram demonstrated in lecture, Bach is one of the most productive, gifted, and seminal genius-composers in the history of music. One can easily devote years of study in order to fully explore Bach's music. We can only have the briefest of introductions to him now, so please consider examining him more fully on your own later.

There is a book entitled, "Gödel, Escher, and Bach", which explores the relations between the music of various composers on the one hand, and the concepts of algebra, artificial intelligence, and visual patterning in art on the other. This book is worth reading, because it shows the algebraic algorithms which various composers used in their works, and how those equations also show up in the visual arts (painting, drawing, etc.) and in literature.

Bach borrowed, e.g., the literary structure of chiasmus and created a musical analogue to it.

But Bach also has a Michigan connection!

Several years ago, a man was looking through some old used books in Frankenmuth, Michigan. He found and purchased some old German books. When he took them home and began to read them, he realized that these books were from the personal library of J.S. Bach! Bach had written many comments and notes in the margins of these books, just as most students do. The notes have been carefully copied from these books and published in a book of their own. "Bach's Marginalia" is an example of the kind of discoveries you can make if you have a good education and spend your time paging through old books!

At first, it might seem odd that Bach's book would end up in Michigan. But in the decades after Bach's death in 1750, millions of Germans came to the United States. In fact, more people came from Germany than from any other country. Naturally, these people brought all kinds of personal possessions with them, including a few old books!

Goethe, Faust, and Religion

How can we make sense of Goethe's seemingly self-contradictory views on religion? On the one hand, he makes no pretense of being a Christian, and yet on the other hand, he views the Christian Bible as the source of ultimate spiritual truth. Faust is filled with Biblical allusions. Christianity has both spiritual doctrines and moral doctrines, and Goethe endorses some of both. What is he up to?

One possible way to interpret Goethe would be to say that he is making the historical distinction between Christianity and the church. Christianity is a set of concepts and the actions entailed by the belief in those concepts. The church, on the other hand, is an institution. Goethe rejects both Christianity and the Church, but he rejects them separately, and differently. His rejection of the Church is absolute. His analysis of Christianity is more tentative and wavering. He seems attracted to some facets of Christian spirituality, but unable to embrace them.

We can trace these two through history, and see that often, Christianity opposed the church in many situations. In other situations, Christianity clearly sided with the church. Can you think of concrete historical examples?

So perhaps this was what motivated Goethe's somewhat schizophrenic views. Was Goethe trying to embrace the some of the views of Christianity, reject others, and at the same time distance himself from the church? Which sentences in Faust would be evidence for this?

Goethe had, in the final analysis, an inability to commit, either to a woman, or to a system of belief. He rejected both Christianity and atheism, used the word "pagan" to describe himself, and was nevery quite able to formulate a specific statement of what he actually did believe.

When we study about Goethe, we can take two approaches:

on the one hand, we can study about Goethe's life, his friends and business acquaintances, the influential thinkers of his day, and look at photographs of his house and how he decorated it, and then see how these things influenced, or are reflected in, the text of "Faust".

on the other hand, we can strictly ignore all the background information about Goethe and the times he lived in, and instead focus on the text of Faust alone, examining it carefully for clues about what Goethe thought and what he meant.

Which approach is the correct one?

What do the words "isogogics" and "hermeneutics" mean?

Louis XIV

During the later years of the reign of Louis XIV, a diplomat from Venice visited France and recorded numerous observations, including: “ ... Colbert has increased the treasury by 50 million in secure income; he has actually been the cause of the king's success. But he is deaf to the miserable cries of the oppressed peoples, and without feelings toward the misery of the poor, and unapproachable concerning the general appeals for help, in order to sacrifice for the needs and excessive demands of the ruler ... ”

The absolutism of Louis XIV drove some of France's most skilled workers - the Hugonauts and the Jews - to Prussia, where Hohenzollern dynasty was more welcoming, especially in the person of Frederick the Great. This absolutism also probably sowed the seeds of the French Revolution: the people of France had suffered under such harsh rule, and only people who were very desperate would see the bloody butchery of the French Revolution as an acceptable attempt at freedom. The burdens which Louis XIV placed upon society evoked the bitterness of Rousseau's criticism. The absolutistic attempt to enforce a religious belief system, even if it were well-intendend, created its very opposite: a nation in which there were nearly no Christians; France had many churches and priests, but actual Christianity was rarely, if ever, found.

So absolutism, in addition to being no fun, is ultimately self-defeating.

What are You Worth?

At the very beginning of our Humanities course, we read two samples of law codes from the Ancient Near East: Hammurabi and Moses. In many ways, these two leaders form a paradigmatic dichotomy. The Babylonian king Hammurabi sees human life as a commodity, which has a cash value, and can be traded or taken at will. Moses, leading a group of escaped slaves out of Egypt and organizing them into their own society, views human life as something with value and dignity, something which demands respect.

There are many other polarities between these two worldviews, and they continue today.

Hammurabi lives on today, in the words of a Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand." Holmes sees human life as merely a series of material objects, like rocks or dirt. Representing Moses in our era, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author Saul Bellow, writes that if we agree with Holmes, "our humanity is at risk - it is at risk because the feeling that life is sacred has died away in this century."

Stereotyping Tolerance?

Public schools are constantly the targets of those who wish to shape public opinion on every topic from "Coke vs. Pepsi" to abortion. A recent salvo was fired by a group calling itself the "Southern Poverty Law Center", a name which calls forth sympathy, but which in fact designates a wealthy group of northern lobbyists. This organization mails a periodical entitled "Teaching Tolerance", but does this magazine instead engender negative cliches?

A recent issue addressed the topic of bullying. Nobody likes bullies or bullying. The article was illustrated with five cartoon-like drawings. In each of these, the "bully" was an overweight white male student, slightly taller than average, with blond hair and blue eyes. The "victims" of the bully represented the spectrum of race, gender, hair and eye color, etc., with one notable exception: none of the victims were white males.

What should we conclude from this?

Truth and the Man

Throughout history, the idea of univeral truth has been a tool of the oppressed who seek freedom. Those who seek to use power ruthlessly have little interest in pursuing absolute truths; they say or write whatever is useful in terms of reaching their goals as they exploit and oppress others. Those who suffer injustice at the hands of the power-hungry seek timeless and objective standards in their quest for liberty.

Oppressors like the Roman governor of an out-of-the-way province ask sarcastically, "what is truth?", as they do whatever is needed to increase financial revenue and promote their own political careers, even if it means killing an innocent Rabbi along the way, or executing thousands. Centuries later, genocidal dictators like Stalin would orchestrate famines in order to kill millions, and re-write the history books annually to cover their tracks.

The oppressed, like a rag-tag bunch of ex-slaves wandering through the Arabian desert, form a culture which seeks and values knowledge of what is true, independent of opinion or belief. This understanding of, and respect for, discovered reality, instead of manufactured propaganda, would ultimately blossom in the idea that "the truth will set you free."

Historical movements of those seeking freedom are based on the concept of objective truth, from the American Revolution's concept that a person's rights are "self-evident", to Cicero's defense against imperialism based on a "natural law"; but those whose desire for power is absolute and infinite inevitably come into conflict with, and find it necessary to deny, those truths which are also absolute and infinite - those same truths which are the source of freedom and justice will be opposed by those whose goals can be achieved only by taking away freedom and justice.

The search for transcendent truth not only motivates education, but it prevents any one group in society from imposing its subjective perspective on all the others.

Pax Romana - NOT!

Most history books list the years from 27 B.C. to 180 A.D., which is from the time that Augustus Octavian took power until the time that Marcus Aurelius died, as the "Pax Romana" - "the Roman peace".

In reality, this was an era filled with nearly constant military action. The empire was defending itself against attempted foreign invasions, and also against domestic uprisings in various provinces and annexed territories. Marcus Aurelius himself spent most of his career, not in Rome, but fighting in Europe with the army.

Perhaps the reason that this violent and war-torn era was named "the Roman peace" was because it was a time when, in terms of domestic politics, the authority and the power of the emperor remained relatively unchallenged. For nearly a century, prior to 27 B.C., the Roman world had been savaged by a vicious civil war. Only in comparison with this bloody power struggle of Roman against Roman could the later era be seen as peaceful.

If not a time of "peace," it could perhaps at least be described as an era of domestic political stability.

Who Killed Jesus?

For the last two thousand years, historians have discussed the death of Jesus. All agree that it is historically an important event, shaping culture for millenia aftward; but who is responsible for this murder? This question is somewhat controversial, and has even been considered by some people to lead to anti-Semitism.

We'll present four interpretive options:

First, we can see the Roman occupational forces as responsible for the death of Jesus. He was, after all, crucified by Roman soldiers, under the supervision of a Roman governor; the records of the event say that Pontius Pilate "turned him over to be crucified." Pilate and his soldiers can be seen as the killers.

Second, we can see Jesus as a victim of class warfare. The majority of ordinary Jews were tyrranized by the upper-class Jewish elite. Jesus represented a threat to the power of this aristocracy, teaching that an ordinary Jew could worship, study, and pray in his hometown synagogue, and did not need to make piligrimages to Jerusalem's Temple. This directly threatened both the economic and spiritual hegemony of the Jersualem power class. The hotel and restaurant industry in Jerusalem, a huge source of income with the thousands of pilgrims coming to the city, would evaporate overnight if a religious leader told them that they could stay home and worship in the neighborhood synagogue; the religious leaders in the Temple would likewise lose their status as the top-most layer of the spiritual hierarchy. It was these leaders who demanded that Jesus be crucified, in order to ensure their continued dominance over the majority of ordinary Jews.

Third, Jesus can be seen as a victim of human nature. The literary critic Rene Girard points out the societal pattern of finding scapegoats; Jesus made a convenient sacrifice for the political tensions of the moment.

Finally, Jesus may bear some responsibility - given a chance to offer a defense, Jesus declines to speak, virtually guaranteeing a death sentence. Under this interpretation, it might seem that Jesus manipulated events toward an outcome that one would normally strive to avoid.

Archeology and History

Archeologists are constantly digging up artifacts which interact with our historical narratives. These objects, by themselves, give us little information, and can, in fact, mislead us toward false conclusions about events and people. Taken in the context of text, they can, however, deepen our knowledge of what has happened and who did it.

("Archaeology" can be spelled with or without the second "a"!)

A recent example: in that highly disputed bit of land called "Israel", "Palastine", "Judea", or "the Levant", a team of archaeologists has recently discovered the earliest verified Christian church in Israel. It dates to the early 200's, and is located in the Valley of Armageddon, north of Jerusalem. Mosaics and inscriptions identified the site.

Questions quickly come to mind - why would oldest remaining Christian church in Palastine date from the early 200's, when we know that large numbers of Christians were there as early as 35 A.D.? Why are the Christian churches in other parts of the world so much older?

Texts give us the answer: during the first decades of Christianity, the followers of Jesus met in synagogues and in the Jersusalem Temple, because they were still viewed, at that time, as Jews. Yes, the early Christians were simply one type of Jew. There were several different varieties of Judaism at that time, and Christianity seemed, at first, simply like one more version of the Jewish faith. So there were no separate buildings designated as Christian churches.

When the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, and Christians and Jews were scattered across the Roman Empire, shortly before 100 A.D., the construction of Christian churches, as distinct from Jewish worship structures begins in larger numbers. So why do we find that oldest Christian church in Palastine is from around 200 A.D.? Why not one hundred years earlier?

In fact, there were many churches built a hundred years earlier in the Roman province of Judea. However, they were destroyed, and are not there for today's archaeologists to find.

Unlike the early churches in Greece and other areas of the Roman Empire, the churches in the Levant were the targeted for destruction. In the late 600's, Islamic armies swept through the area, destroying both Jewish and Christian worship structures.

That's why today's archeologists don't find old churches in that part of the world.

Renaissance Conflict!

In Florence, during that time period which we call the "Renaissance", lived the famous speaker Savonarola (born 1452). He gained his fame as a Christian critic of the popular arts and entertainment, and began a movement to reform society. Savonarola wanted to reduce the problems of alcohol abuse, the sexual exploitation of women, and a general attitude of people wanting to simply be entertained, instead of being productive and constructive and seeking intellectual challenges.

But Savonarola's good intentions went bad. At some point, he slipped away from his original Christian viewpoint, and instead merely claimed to be a Christian, while in fact actually seeking to control the lives of those around them, by trying to make them conform to his arbitrary standards. Instead of inspiring people with a hopeful message, he began to simply place a series of legalistic demands upon them.

What did the good, enlightened Renaissance people of Florence do to Savonarola? They simultaneously burnt and hanged him!

So, nobody really ends up looking very good in the this situation: Savonarola abandoned his attempt to help people and sought instead merely to control them. In return, the so-called "Renaissance" people, known for their "intellectual curiousity", decided to burn him at the stake. So much for the Renaissance!

An Emperor By Any Other Name

You've heard of "Charlemagne", and you've heard him mentioned as "Charles the Great" and even "Carolus Magnus" in Latin. These names are, obviously, all equivalent, but he would have answered to none of them. He was a Frank, and spoke Frankish until the day of his death. (His biographer and close friend, Einhard, says that Charlemagne investigated learning Latin, but decided not to do it.) He hired diplomats to speak in Latin for him.

His name, in the only language he ever knew, was simply "Karl". The Frankish language is a dialect of German, and a modern version of it is still spoken in the homeland of the Franks. This region, Frankenland (or "Franconia" in English), constitutes the northern half of the modern province of Bavaria. As his reputation grew, he became known as "Karl der Grosse" (properly "Karl der Große"), meaning "Karl the Great".

His people, the Franks, left their name on city of Frankfurt, which means literally "the ford of the Franks", because that is where the Franks crossed the river during the era which we call the "migration of peoples" (historians call this the "Völkerwanderung"). There are actually three towns named "Frankfurt", separated by several hundred miles. By these town names, one can re-trace the route of the Franks during the Völkerwanderung. Even Michigan has its Frankenmuth. The nation of France also bears the name of this Germanic tribe - a bit of irony!

Could it be that he became known as "Charlemagne" or "Charles the Great" because French-speaking and English-speaking historians didn't want to admit that the first and most powerful central European empire was formed and ruled by a German?

Constantine

So why do they call him Constantine "the Great"? Well, he did manage to unify a Roman Empire that was threatening to politically disintegrate; he moved the capitol from Rome to Constantinople (a/k/a Byzantium); he triggered an artistic creative spree of buildings and sculptures and mosiacs; and, perhaps most significantly, he legalized Christianity - taking this belief system from an illegal activity punishable by death or imprisonment to an accepted, and even admired, status within the empire.

Interestingly, Constantine did not illegalize the other belief systems in the empire - those versions of polytheistic paganism which had been responsible for executing hundreds of thousands of Christians. Rather, he showed them a type of tolerance which they had never shown to the Christians. Constantine thereby demonstrated what the Romans could expect from their first Christian emperor. Given a chance to exact blood revenge from his former persecutors, he chose not to do so. It is this voluntary surrender of power, the decision not to oppress, which would characterize a new era. Perhaps this is what makes him great.

Julius Caesar - Hero or Jerk?

The guy who almost was the first Roman emperor was amazingly popular - yeah, that's right, Julius Caesar never actually was emperor, but he almost was, and he was really quite well-liked by the average Roman citizen, at least for most of his career. Toward the end of his life, his popularity went down a little, because some folks suspected that his loyalties might be split between Rome and Egypt - or, more accurately, between Rome and Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt. But, anyway, he was well-liked by most of the people most of the time.

He worked to keep his popular status by handing out citizenships to some of the residents of the territories which had been added to the empire - they didn't resent being conquered so much, if they could get some benefit out of it. And he made sure that the average Roman citizen had access to the minutes of the meetings of the Senate.

But this popular guy also had his dark side. In the course of conquering Gaul, he boasted that he killed a million people, and sold another million into slavery. Now, these numbers might not be exact - it could be a little more, or a little less. But the bottom line is this: to kill anywhere near that many people, we're not talking about soldiers falling in battle. We're talking about genocide. We're talking about killing children, women, cripples, and old folks. We're talking about burning entire villages to the ground.

So maybe Julius Caesar wasn't such a nice guy, after all.

Cuturally Schizophrenic

Between 50 A.D. and 800 A.D., the Christian faith spread through Europe. The continent had previously been dominated by various systems of polytheistic paganism. The new faith did not immediately erase all traces of the earlier belief system. On the contrary, we can see “split personality” in European culture.

Consider Beowulf: this story reflects much of the blood-thirstiness and lack of regard for human life which was the culture of Norse mythology - yet, at the same time, traces of the Christian virtues of humility and helping other humans are found. So the characters evince simultaneously desires for blood-revenge and a selfless altruism: a truly mixed lot!

Likewise, the ideology of “courtly love” (which may be only a literary idea, and never carried out in real life) contains both traces of Christian pacifistic concepts, and traces of the pagan “warrior-cult” mentality.

The German folktale known as the "Nibelungenlied" was re-written in the 1200's to include references to Christian concepts of self-sacrifice to aid others, yet its main plot is one of pagan revenge and power-seeking.

When reading European literature, it is necessary to unravel the tangled strands of paganism and Christianity which mingled to yield characters who act in seemingly inconsistent ways: these individuals seem, at one moment, to be vicious polytheists - at the next moment, they appear to have the Christian ideal of respect for human life.

The Punic Wars

Rome experienced three wars with Carthage between 264 B.C. and 146 B.C.; they are called the “Punic” Wars because the early founders of Carthage were from Phoenicia. These wars would essentially determine whether Rome or Carthage would be the dominate geo-political power in the Mediterranean area.

In the first Punic War, Rome, led in part by a military hero named Regulus, won Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.

In the second Punic war, Hamilcar, a Carthiginian leader, consolidated Spain under Carthage's rule. His son, Hannibal, attacked a Roman outpost in Spain, and then marched with elephants over both the Pyrenees and the Alps, and came close to the city of Rome itself. In panic, the citizens of Rome conducted human sacrifices to convince their idols to defend them. Hannibal did not take the city, due in part to a tactically disastrous hesitation on his part, and in part to the fact that the supply lines which were to bring him more troops and equipment were cut by the Romans. The Roman officer Scipio Africanus the Elder captured Spain, and then began to invade northern Africa. Hannibal abandoned his campaign in Italy and went south to defend the city of Carthage itself. By the end of this war, Carthage was stripped of its various territories, and reduced to a small area around the city of Carthage itself. It was forced to pay tribute to Rome.

The Roman politician Cato the Elder incited Scipio Africanus the Younger to attack Carthage in the third Punic War. Carthage was completely destroyed by the dominating Roman military.

These wars left Rome as the clear master of the Mediterranean region; world history would be very different had Carthage won these wars: your computer would have a font called “Times New Carthaginian”, and you would use “Carthaginian numerals”.

Is Marcus Aurelius Important?

Marcus Aurelius wrote a book which remains a best-seller over a thousand years later; in 2003 and 2004, several thousand copies were sold. So is this guy important?

Well, that depends. In the context of Roman history, he is remembered as one of the “good” emperors; he held the empire together when various social and political forces - not to mention the enemy's armies - were trying to pull it apart. He did not engage in the extreme vices of the “bad” emperors: he did not enjoy human torture as a form of entertainment, organize sadistic orgies, etc. But his career is also located in the era of the final and gradual decline of empire. Rome was past its prime, and Aurelius was simply doing the best job he could to manage the empire. His son would prove to be hopelessly wicked and corrupt, causing further imperial decline. In the big picture of 500 years of imperial history, Aurelius was probably no more, and no less, important that dozens of other emperors whose names we find only in small print in seldom-read books. Historically, we might be tempted to say that he is not that important.

Philosophically, on the other hand, his little book seems to have interested thousands of readers over the years - readers who may have little or no interest in the history of the Roman Empire. Philosophically, Aurelius has sparked thoughts in countless minds, and may be responsible for the fact that Stoicism is still viewed as an important philsophical system.

So is Marcus Aurelius important? Well, the answer may be that he is historically unimportant, but philsophically important.

Everybody's a Hypocrite!

History is filled with all sorts of sages who give us moral advice and ethical guidance. But it seems that each of these sages has his own dirty laundry: Marcus Aurelius gave us an impassionate personal Stoicism, yet allowed the blood-thirsty polytheists in his empire to execute Christians by the thousands; Cicero discovered the principle of Natural Law, upon which most later legal systems are founded, yet was a mercenary lawyer who did whatever dirty work was needed to win his latest political encounter; Octavian-Augustus, the first Roman emperor, prevented the empire from social disintegration by strengthening the fellowship of the basic family unit (mom, dad, kids), yet he may have had a fling or two with a woman who was not his wife. And so it goes: great moral advice given by individuals who do, in some situations, the very opposite. They're all hypocrites! Shall we then simply ignore them and their advice?

All humans are, however, hypocrites. This is, in fact, part of the human situation: we are by nature imperfect. And it is this nature which makes us seek, and give, ethical guidance. So we can't really blame our philosophers for being hypocrites; in fact, they have to be - if they weren't, they wouldn't be human, and they wouldn't be able to help us with our dilemmas.

We must separate the advice from the advice-giver; Cicero's Natural Law, Octavian's civil doctrine of marriage, and Aurelius's Stoicism can help us - but we must, in the same breath, condemn their actions even as we embrace their words. And if we condemn their actions but embrace their words, what then shall we do with the men themselves? Neither condemn nor praise them, but simply view them as our fellow humans, flawed, yet having those flashes of creative human insight which are, along with our flaws, a necessary and unalterable aspect of being human.

Gothic?

As you already know, "Gothic" architecture nothing (or very little) to do with the Goths, a Germanic tribe which roamed around Europe. But, although the Goths didn't invent this architectural style, they had a sophisticated culture of their own.

Historians sometimes picture the Goths as "savage", uncultured, crude, and blood-thirsty. This is far from true.

By 100 A.D., at the latest, the Goths were literate (i.e., they could read and write). Some historians believe that they were literate even eariler.

The earliest Gothic writings are preserved in "runes". Runes, which are now sometimes used in silly fortune-telling games, are simply the letters of an early Germanic alphabet, which was used to write Gothic and Scandinavian languages.

By around 350 A.D., the Gothic leader Wulfila (also spelled "Ulfilas" and several other ways) revised the Gothic spelling and grammar, and created a more modern alphabet for the language. By 400 A.D., there was quite a literary culture among the Goths. One surviving work is a commentary on Greek texts.

So the Goths weren't uncultured. Nor were they savage: when they became Christianized around 300 A.D., they stopped human and animal sacrifice.

So why do we have this image of Goths as "rude and crude"? Perhaps because the earliest historians to write about them were Romans, and these Romans, upset about the decline of their own empire, needed to find somebody who looked even worse, so as to make the Romans look good by comparison. Later historians, then, simply relied on the earlier historians, and painted a rather grim picture of the Goths.

Gothic, as a living and spoken language, survived in isolated, obscure pockets until around 1400 A.D., mainly in small villages around the Crimean Sea.

The U of M, here in Ann Arbor, has two noted Gothic specialists, who are famous around the world for their expertise in this language. They have published several books on Gothic grammar.

Is this a future career for you? Would you like to be a specialist in the Gothic language?

So What is a Palimpsest?

In the early Middle Ages, parchment (a type of thin leather from goat or sheep skin) was a common writing surface. It was relatively expensive, but very durable. We're talking about writing books and essays, not letters to Grandma.

If you wanted to write something, but had neither parchment nor money for parchment, you might take a rough stone and rub it over the surface of an already-written parchment to erase what was already written there, and then you could write. Centuries later, scientists discovered that you could, using ultra-violet light in some cases, infra-red in others, still read what had been erased. In still other cases, chemical reactions or sub-atomic particles could bring the erased writing back to life.

In this way, books and essays which have been lost for centuries can be recovered ... a sort of scientific detective work in the service of history and literature.

A "palimpsest" is a piece of parchment which has been erased and re-written. The task is to figure out what was erased.

Major universities have several palimsest readers, people who do this kind of scientific investigation.

Would you like to be a palimpsest reader?

What do Professors at Duke University say about Humanities?

A tenured full professor at Duke says that he enjoyed "the Humanities course, which was my favorite in high school, and indeed may be the most eye-opening class I have ever had."

This scholar graduated from Huron in 1979, and went on to study at Kalamazoo College, Notre Dame University, and the German Universität in Hannover. He has published books and articles on Des Cartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and Malebranche.

Merely an "Excerpt"?

This Humanities course is a "survey course" as schools call them. We cover roughly 4,000 years of history between August and May. We touch upon many of the most important people, books, and events. But we cannot do it in depth: we can merely give you a brief glimpse. When you get to the university, you can choose to take in-depth classes in these various subjects, where you will cover much less material, but cover it much more thoroughly.

In such a survey course, one necessary compromise is to read excerpts from famous texts. There isn't time to read everything every written by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Thucydides, Shakespeare, and all the other pivotal thinkers. So we read only brief selections from their writings. And this is where you have to do some critical thinking about "spin".

For example, depending on which pages you read, you can make Thucydides seem either like a spokesman for noble morality of the ancient Greeks, or a social critic denouncing their mercenary blood-thirstiness.

Depending on which chapters of the "Republic" you read, Plato can seem either like a proto-Marxist social engineer, or a other-worldly observer of philosophical abstractions.

So, while you think about what you're reading, remember to also think about what you're NOT reading.

The Mystery of Saladin

In the long history of attacks on Europe, starting in the 700's when Charles Martell ("Karl the Hammer") defended the European heartland at the battle of Tours (732/733 A.D.) and repelled the invaders, and lasting at least until 1683, when Vienna was attacked, but not conquered, the figure of Saladin stands out as one of the most vicious military leaders to attempt to destroy Europe.

After military confrontations, the standard practice of his troops was to torture and kill the military prisoners as well as any civilians from the opposing side. Women and children were no exception, and Saladin's soldiers used rape to terrorize local populations.

On July 3, 1187, when Saladin's army attacked a group of Europeans at Hattin, he gave an order which has been preserved for us in writing: all the Europeans were beheaded; no prisoners were taken.

The mystery of Saladin is why, a few months later, in October of 1187, when he captured the city of Jerusalem, he did not execute the Europeans there. In his long and bloody career, this was the one time that he choose not to kill the prisoners he had taken. Why?

His magnanimity was actually pragmatism. He had intially planned to put to death all the Christians in the city. However, when the Christian commander inside Jerusalem, Balian of Ibelin, threatened in turn to destroy the city before Saladin could get inside, Saladin relented - although once inside the city he did enslave those Christians who could not afford to buy their way out of town.

So Saladin made a double profit: ransom from those who could pay, and income made from selling the rest as slaves.

Balain of Ibelin, by the way, was not a European. He was a native Middle Easterner, but one who had escaped the forced conversion to Islam being spread by armies like Saladin's.

Saladin, it seems, was content to put aside his genocidal passions, if he could gain financially from it.

Bach's Newest CD!

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685, which makes him a little old to be releasing new CD's, but somehow, he's managing.

A researcher was looking through some old papers, and found a two-page, hand-written aria for soprano and harpsichord, the first Bach vocal work discovered in seventy years. The text is a twelve-stanza poem, beginning "Alles mit Gott und nichts ohne ihn" (Everything with God, and nothing without Him). A reviewer has called the music "a reflective, meditative, soothing piece, as Bach's church music so often is."

The CD should be available at your local store soon.