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Jane - Library at Alexandria
It is true that the best ideas and inventions tend to seem incredibly obvious once they emerge. This library was no exception and the collating and organizing of so much information was really good common sense - as was the formulation of punctuation and grammar in relation to organization and thus comprehension of language. It would seem that some of the volume of the library was accounted for by repetition. The programme started me thinking about knowledge. Ours is a strange lot on this planet, for all around our quotidian comfort zone lies mystery which few even consider amidst the daily 'doing' where habit reigns. How do we place value? True knowledge is not really possible except in the context of a completed understanding of reality which we're nowhere near. We tend towards a discrete and somewhat chaotic fragmentation. In a world of plenitude the rarefied 'echelons of epistemology' are a wonderful engagement of the intellect in man, but in a world of largely imposed lack such as ours, shouldn't evolved conscience possibly point to a much greater utilitarian use of knowledge. What's the big deal of discovery? What's been discovered was there all the time anyway be it science, history, geology or whatever. It's simply our relative grip on it which has emerged. What we do with the discovery is surely the paramount bit. The library at Alexandria was naturally separate from the events (barbarism) outside its doors, but I really think that over two thousand years later we should have seen greater integration and implementation of the contribution of this planet's finest minds (which may not be included in the historically familiar). At this point I arrive, inevitably, at the manipulative 'catch 22' of politics and of those who seek and hold the wrong sort of power...and who is paying for the research and why etc.. Knowledge is far and away our greatest power and tends to be used as a double edged sword. With knowledge comes huge responsibility and it seems to me that the finest use of epistemology should be to wisely optimise the application of information and more importantly, understand the barriers to that. Of course, common sense being reintroduced would be the most powerful tool of all - but whilst our catch 22 is in place there's little chance of that..............common sense let loose........unthinkable! Best wishes and thanks for all the new synapses which this week's programme has forged in my brain!
Emma re: library of Alexandria
The multiracial polyglot of Alexandria mentioned but surely the non-white non-Greek would not have been free to benefit from library culture unless indirectly (learned Master/favourite slave situation) I was wondering were the excluded book burners? The only reason given for the library demise was religious repression, was there no underdog/excluded rebellion?The programme made the multiracial polyglot seem passive and as if they were stored away like books but not valued as such, the panel were not going in this direction of thought.
martin mcdonagh
Dear Melvyn,Thanks for a wonderful,stimulating and rich programme. In Our Time is in its own way a library of Alexandria for our times. Best wishes,Martin McDonagh,
David Barnett, Ph.D. - Library at Alexandria
One of the most influential Alexandrian translation projects was for the Hebrew Bible which became known as the Septuagint. Would Christianity have become a world religion without it?
GrahamR - Library contents
I was hoping a little devilment might have prompted the question of exactly what knowledge they filled 250,000 volumes with in those days? A dozen shelves of geometry, another dozen of bridge, ship and aqueduct building... let's face it, not much biology or physics. They must have been bulked out with an awful lot of literature!We should have been told!Anyway, it was interesting as always.
Paulpic Library in Egypt
Maybe the organizational problems with the virtual library of all knowledge, that is the web, is that it has no place to which our minds can relate it. I propose 180 degrees longitude / 0 lattitude & 4000 below sea level (virtually of course).
The Library at Alexandria
The facts that led to the demise of the great library were it had formerly been run by a Greek elite for the time of the first two Ptolemies, leading to a blaze of intellectual enterprise, which never reached beyond a small circle of people in touch with the group of philosophers. Artisans and traders never came in contact with the thinkers.The philosophers speculated loftily about atoms and the nature of things, but he had no practical experience of enamels and pigments and philtres and such things. He wasnot interested in substances. The intellectual blaze is shut off from the world at large.The world went on in its old ways unaware that the revolutionary seed of scientific knowledge that would one day revolutionize it had been sown. There were few practical applications of science except in the realms of medicine, and the progress ofscience was not stimulated and sustained by the interest and excitement of practicalapplications. There was therefore nothing to keep the work going when the intellectual curiosity of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II was withdrawn. The discoveries of the museum went on in obscure manuscripts and never, until the revival of scientific curiosity at the Renaissance, reached out to the mass of mankind. Nor did the Library produce any improvements in book-making. Paper-a Chinese invention-did not reach the West until 9th Century AD. The only book materials wereparchment and strips of the papyrus reed joined edge to edge. These strips were kept in rolls that were ver unwieldy to wind to and fro and read and very inconvenient for referenc Everything was handwritten and copied. The world had known the printing of seals on clay tablets in Sumeria, but without abundant paper there was little advantage in printing books. Also as the dynasty of the Ptolemies went on they became Egyptianized, they fell under the sway of Egyptian priest and Egyptian religious developments, they ceased to follow the work that was done, and their control stifled the spirit of enquiry altogether.. The brilliant intellectual life here andat Syracuse and at Pergamon of the Hellenic world was increasingly stricken by invasions from the north, Gallic, Roman and Parthian and Mongolian nomads.
James; Religious groups owning their own scripture
It's more like music; publishers own the recent translations of the Christian scriptures. At least one New Zealand academic has done his own translation of the New Testament, because he wanted to rearrange it into his view of the order in which it was written, and could not get permission to use an existing translation.
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