October 15, 2018 Monday
Bedtime Story
Machiavelli and Luca Pacioli
It is a kind of thinking that makes many
consider Machiavelli a prototype of a modern empirical thinking scientist even
though by no standard of any means can he be considered a scientist.
For instance after keenly observing the
lives of people he came to the conclusion that it is not mandatory that living
a virtuous life necessarily begets happiness to its followers.
It is an unhappy truth but he was not
hesitant in writing it down among his several observations.
He was a realist or pragmatist who
truthfully stated that the actions and decisions of political leaders are
rarely based on moral values and are largely an outcome of political and social
contingencies that they are presented with at any given moment.
Similarly he was against Christianity or
perhaps critical of those who followed the teachings of gospels literally
because it was patently obvious to him that religions are man-made.
Moreover he considered that religions due
to their false promises and assurances made people docile in accepting
hardships and injustices of life and encouraged them to leave events in the
hands of chance, luck or fortune rather than to struggle to shape their own
destiny.
While Christianity told people to take
pride in modesty and poverty (Matthew 5:5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall
inherit the earth.) Machiavelli encouraged active pursuit of ambition and glory
as essential qualities to possess in order to have a fruitful life.
Such ambitions are specially needed for the
ruler of the state (in contrast to his subjects) as it would encourage
risk-taking and innovation, to seek and discover new means and modes of
governance.
He saw it clearly that the list of vices in
humans was long and inherent and it would be wishful thinking to hope that
humans would behave as the scriptures demanded or hoped them to.
This fact thus made it natural as its
outcome rivalry for progress and acquisition of resources leading to arms race
and consequently wars.
Similarly, when it came to economics, it
was clear to him that humans are inherently greedy and rife with vice which has
to be encouraged and harnessed within limits by the republic.
It is the fundamental argument for the
modern form of capitalism that is based on the premise of ‘public virtue from
private vices’.
Machiavelli in general is associated with
everything negative but his realism, empiricism and pragmatism through the
newly developing technology of printing press would unleash a whole new meme of
thinking for the future generations to come.
A part of the beginning of this kind of new
way of engaging with the world was these two characters the friar and
mathematician Luca Pacioli and his partner Leonardo da Vinci.
Francis Bacon had argued that nature needs
to be both studied and brought under control by observation with real
experience (and not spiritual ones) and experimentation free from any kind of
biases or assumptions.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
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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