[travel] Tell me more about the dead white people

[mattbell]

My college humanities courses tended to avoid the canon of dead white people at all costs, instead focusing on alternative voices, indigenous cultures, oppressed peoples and the like. Some of it was very interesting, some of it wasn't. However, after a visit to the stunning Athens Archaeological museum, which showed me firsthand the achievement's of Athens' Golden Age, I want to learn more about the intellectual culture that spawned the world's first democracy, a rich theatrical tradition, and numerous other achievements. To those of you who sought out the traditional classics, I ask what you would recommend, keeping in mind that I'm on the road so online material is preferred. I assume it's all well out of copyright, even the translations.

Comments

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I would mainly apply this to philosophy, but I think it's also true to some extent for physics. I suppose in physics you can often write down a formula that will tell you what measurable values to predict in certain ranges of circumstances, and thus postpone the metaphysical questions, but once you start asking how different systems interact, or how they work outside a standard range of validity for your formulas, then you have to pay attention to what the numbers in the formulas are supposed to mean. Also, even if you say that you're just using the numbers for predictive value, if you're doing theoretical work, then the direction of your research will most likely be shaped by your "unofficial" interpretations of what the numbers mean. Empirically equivalent theories suggest different modifications, both in the light of recalcitrant evidence, and also when generalizing to new situations, or when noticing oddities in the behavior of the system at certain points. And I think how your theory will develop is a very important part of one's scientific theorizing. So you can't really just ignore the metaphysics, unless all you care about is predictions of a controlled type of system in a moderate range.