302

This question inspired by this post..

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] kromem@lemmy.world 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The worst part of it was that for a ton of stuff he had contemporaries that were right about much much more, but were dismissed in favor of his confidently incorrect BS.

For example the Epicureans, who thought matter was made of tiny indivisible parts, that light too was made of indivisible parts moving really fast, that each parent contributed to a "doubled seed" which determined the traits of the child and could bring back features of skipped generations, that the animals which we see today were just the ones that were best able to survive to reproduce, and that all of existence arose only from the random interactions of these indivisible parts of matter and not from any intelligent design.

And because Aristotle's stupid ideas influenced the lineage of modern thought, most people learn about him but very few learn about the other group that effectively preempted modern thought millennia earlier.

But he just assumed the Queen was a King

Actually, he acknowledged "some say" the Queen was female, but then argued it couldn't be because the gods don't give women weapons and it had a stinger. And the identification of the leader of the hive as male was actually used for centuries to justify patriarchal monarchy as being "by God's design" because after all, look at the bee hive (somehow when we realized it was actually a female that logic went up in smoke).

So there were other people that did know what was correct, but Aristotle screwed up the development of thinking around it by rationalizing an opposite answer with an appeal to misogyny.

Wild that he was only two degrees of separation from a teacher famed for praising the knowledge of self-ignorance and not falling into false positives and negatives.

[-] sexdrakma@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 year ago

What I'm getting from this is that people were the same back then as they are now. Aristotle was basically a hack who said just the right bigoted things for the ruling class to latch onto to justify the status quo. Like an ancient political commentator, or popular "scientist" who says anything for attention.

[-] exocrinous@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

It's Plato's fault. Plato was a shithead.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

But the Epicureans also denied that virtue is primary in achieving eudaimonia and from a Stoic POV, that's just a cardinal sin. Due to the Stoics is also the idea of animals being self-aware as well as cosmopolitanism and the absolutely unheard of notion that women have the same mental faculties as men and thus should also enjoy education.

But really, all the "Figuring out how to be like Sokrates" schools of philosophy were highly productive.

this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
302 points (96.6% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27277 readers
2026 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS