April 24, 2017 Monday
Bedtime Story
Greek Stoicism and Logic
To some extent, more or less, correctly or erroneously, wantonly
or unknowingly, most Greek philosophers took interest in logic.
Diodorus Cronus, a Greek philosopher who lived somewhere around
300 BC, was a Stoic philosopher who is said to have first developed
propositional logic.
The tenants of Stoicism are fundamentally materialistic; in the
sense that they resort least to magical beliefs, spirituality and all other
kinds of false comforting and irrational yearnings.
Once you get rid of all this superfluous dust and opacity that mask
the reality, one is naturally left with just logic and observations
(Experiments came a lot later).
Though the word stoic as used currently refers to someone who
represses feelings and is indifferent to pain, or rather someone who is nonchalant
to pain, grief, or joy or pleasure, the stoic philosophy as a whole is quite
different from this simple understatement.
It is something else about stoicism that appeals to me.
Stoicism, in my view, is a way of life which involves practice of
logic, attaining knowledge through the use of reason (and through reading of the
works of others), self-dialogue, contemplation of death, training to remain in
the present moment and daily reflections on everyday problems and investigating
its solutions.
Stoics place highest premium on the following four virtues:
1. Wisdom (not in the sense of multiple degrees or letters)
2. Courage (not in the sense of battling lions or warriors)
3. Justice (not in the sense of court and legal jurisprudence) and
4. Temperance (moderation or voluntary self-restraint that in turn
amounts to strong discipline of character)
Besides their philosophy on living, the stoics take great interest
in understanding nature.
It is obvious that the Greek stoics’ understanding of nature was
primitive and had to be so because they simply did not possess the technology
to investigate nature.
They did not even possess the number 0, at least not in the sense
the way we use it!
Yet I find that at the very least, they paid a very minimal
emphasis on unnatural, magical or superstitious.
That is a huge progress considering the beliefs an average modern
human ape holds in spite of accretion of a huge wealth of knowledge concerning
the origins of life, the universe and complexity from simplicity in general.
I shall now halt my discourse on stoicism with this much and
continue my story on the rules on inference.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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