All right, so, the faith systems of the Greeks
consisted partly of what we know quite comfortably
as the the pantheon, the famous Greek, pantheon
consisting of gods, who were known as olympic
gods. Seven century, a break through started
happening, they believe it seven century it
could have been earlier, 8th century b c,
a breakthrough started happening in this faith
system through what came to be known as the
Orphic system of thought.
Orphic after Orpheus, you can see that Orpheus
was a person who is set to of have migrated
to Greece from Crete or rather via Crete on
to Egypt. If you can visualize the map of
the Mediterranean in that part which is called
the Egypt, you find that between Greece and
the Archipelago and the main land the North
Africa of Egypt there lies a largest kind
of islands called Crete; C r e t e. So, Crete
was a usual line of travel for a lot of people
who are either trading or looking to go to
places when they moved from North of Egypt
known as Ionia and then through Egypt; am
sorry North of Greece through Ionia then through
Greece and through the islands to Crete and
to Egypt North Africa and then all the way
east up to Persia, that was the usual route
in which people moved. So, Crete was a very
important kind of you know stop over place
for many of these people, it is believed that
Orpheus was a person who came from Egypt,
he certainly seem to have acquired a lot of
his knowledge of his belief system from Egypt,
set to a state for a while in Crete and then
moved into mainland Greece.
Now, the Orphic system brought something which
was totally unheard of in the religion of
the Greeks, it brought in the idea of transmigration
of souls. The idea which was propagated was
that all beings and all human beings were
endowed with souls which left the body at
the time of the dying of the body and could
reenter another form, another body at a later
stage. So, this transmigration theory was
absolutely new and added to that was the believe
that all human beings at the time of death,
either they went into a land of comfort heaven
as it were.
And alternatively went through a period of
great sufferings, sometimes were short period
but, the soul could also suffer for a long
period of time. It did not use the word hell,
Orphic religion did not use the word hell,
but, it amounted to what later Christianity
called it as hell. Anyway, so transmigration
and then the idea of heaven and hell and then
the idea was also that that all human beings
were partly divine, partly non divine. So
the whole purpose of human existence in the
Orphic religion was to purify yourself and
purify yourself and purify yourself till such
time as you are only divine and the human
the mortal in you left. So, the Orphic religion
had enormous presence of rituals in a manner
in which Greek religion never had before that,
all kinds of rituals dominated the Orphic
religion as steps towards purification of
the soul.
Some very conservative forms of Orphic beliefs
or you can say violent forms of Orphic beliefs
believed that the finest ritual was to tare
an animal apart where it was alive and eat
it, it would purify you completely. I will
explain this slightly later, why this happened
and how many of these Greek beliefs, later
found their versions in the Christian beliefs.
So, this was Orphism and Orphism also had
a theology. What is theology? We are all the
time using the word theology.
Knowledge about god.
Is it knowledge about god?
static.
It is actually a study of the relationship
of man and god know, theology is all about.
You remove man from the reckoning, there is
no theology in Christianity, because it is
man, son of god, god; the wholly spirit. So,
the trinity and related, as related to man
is what in theology is all about know. Anyway,
this is certainly what theology became after
Christianity and the theology of the Greeks
of the Orphic type had the following belief.
It believed that Zeus had a concert called
a Persifuny and they had a child called Bacchus
and Bacchus was torn apart and eaten by a
type of human beings called Titans and when
they did that he became a marten, but, the
titans ate everything of Bacchus except the
heart. And there are different versions of
what happened to the heart, one version said
that Zeus himself ate the heart and then Bacchus
was rebound out of the, thigh of Zeus. The
other version is that Zeus gave it to Semele,
another lady concert of his and she gave birth
to a child which was the rebirth of Bacchus.
So, in the theology, the mart edam of Bacchus
and his rebirth is what everybody tries to
attain. The mart edam of the frail human part
of themselves and the liberation of the divine
part of themselves is what all Bacchian rituals
or Orphic cults were about. So, the rituals
are all focused on how to purify yourself,
in the Purificatory rituals aimed basically
at getting rid of the human side the baser
side to you and refining the divine side to
yourself so that you became purely divine.
So, this whole business of tarring an animal
apart and eating it as a ritual, it symbolic
of the way Bacchus himself was torned apart
and eaten by the titans and in the process
was rebound as a divine human being. So, you
would be rebound by if you symbolically reenacted
not of course,, by eating your Neighbor, but,
by eating may be animal. So, this was broadly
the Orphic cult.
There was some Orphic cults which are very
conservative, in the sense that they did not
believe in eating any form of meat through
the year except on the days of certain kinds
of ritual ceremonies when they would give
up their non meat eating habits and would
tear apart animals and eat it for that day.
Now, there are three, four things about this
system of belief which strike me as interesting
versions of belief else were too.
The idea of transmigration of souls is very
ancient, it is to be found in the Jarastrostrian
religion, it is found in Hinduism, it is found
in certain forms of Buddhism, yeah it is found
in Buddhism; all forms of Buddhism, it is
found in Confucianism, it is found in Taoism
of certain varieties not all Tao, but, certain
varieties, it is found in most of Judaism
before they became Jainist, it was an early
Christianity but, later given up as a bad
idea bad publicity. So, transmigration was
is a pretty old idea that there is a soul
and which is distinct from the body, it inhabits
the body and that it leaves the body and it
can go to other bodies, it something which
is very old idea in all religion, most religions.
So, the Orphic religion had that.
The Zeus religion was pantheistic, I am talking
of Judaism around the same period as the Orphic
cult was spreading in Greece from Egypt. Would
you know that there is the there was a sizable
population of Jewry in Egypt at the time we
are talking about 600–700 b c a the huge
Zeus population in Egypt at that time who
had flood from a tyrannical ruler called . So,
there was a big Zeus population and it is
believed that Orpheus himself must have interacted
with them, but, there is no trace of the Orphic
believe in anything that the Zeus said then
or later. Because most of Zeus, let and migrated
to Palestine form Egypt you know the big accedes
in oldustment so that there was an idea of
transmigration in the Zeus faith with their
pantheistic belief almost tell about a couple
of hundred year before Jesus was bourned is
well established. So, transmigration is a
big old idea.
The other idea is rebirth of the divine through
an act of mart edam, you find this escort
in different forms of Zeus faith. It certainly
found its echo in the very birthen, the rise
of Christianity, the Mart Edam of a great
leader divine person and rebound right resurrected
in christianity rebound as purely devine.
So, this ideas; the idea of resurrection not
just through Mart Edam, you find it repeating
itself in various kinds of Hindu, Pantheon
Hindu mythology and so forth. Very often a
person would perform penances, in order that
he might be bound as this or that in the next
birth. And the idea is that you move you prefer
to move into a more evolved birth the next
time.
So, transmigration rebirth is very common
in the Hindu faiths too, it is very common
as a method of prayer in certain forms of
Buddhism which consider Buddha as an object
of theism. This is the Mahayana Buddhism which
is in china, am sorry, Indochina Srilanka
Burma and so on and so forth. Where Buddha
is considered is an object of theist in worship
and there is a prayer for reemergence of your
life in more evolved form in the next birth,
this is a very big prayer so I am trying to
put the Orphic cults in its place.
The idea of transmigration, it is pretty big
going back to other religion would get back
for that back and time then the idea of rebirth
after a Mart Edam in the story of Bacchus
is again to be found in other parts of the
world. So, which basically means that quite
a sight from what the older pantheon of the
Greeks was this Orphism had immense appeal
to people. It appeal to people because it
discipline the lives of the people and particular
ritual structures, it talk to them about the
possibility of your evolution from a dirty
being to something more divine and so on and
so forth through purificatory rituals and
the power of the priesthood which comes in
a very useful in all these things so it became
immensely popular.
So, by the time these great thinkers were
talking about things in Greece, predominant
section of the local population was subscribing
to one form of Orphic cult or another. It
is not that this Orphic cults get away with
the pantheon, the Greeks always like to number
of gods and they did even then, but, it kind
of focused themselves on backers and the theology
of backers very strongly and the ritual processes
of Orphic cult to cover their life completely.
This is an important thing in the light of
what was to come later in the lives of many
thinkers.
Now, so, these are the traditions of faith
in Greece as we have seen then let us talk
of the tradition of knowledge. et us talk
of the tradition of knowledge the empirical
and speculative tradition this is attributed
by Burton Rassel who writes about history
of world philosophy. He attributes this part
of thinking, this style of thinking not to
the Greeks, but, to the Ionians, who are slightly
in the northern part of the Greece and also
to other Greeks settlements which were in
mainland Italy. So, he says this kind of a
speculative thinking about the world around
in materialistic terms not simply in totally
in faith terms this was a practice in these
places where as. The southern Greece was influence
more and more by the Orphic cults and things
and so on and so forth so whatever this was
a different tradition.
And it had a strong influence lot a of these
people who are big time thinkers actually
came from outside of the mainland Greece,
some of them had a strong Ionian influence
in their backgrounds too. So, the first of
these traditions, we can talk about is the
miles an tradition routing back to the town
of Miletus. At least, three of the seven great
personalities as they came to be known in
Greek thought came from the Milesian tradition.
There were two or three common things in the
Milesian tradition which makes one suggest
that probably the system of speculative knowledge,
speculative construction of knowledge the
empirical system of knowledge all these things
might have originated with the Milesian tradition.
The Milesian thinkers believed for instance
that the prime elements in the planet were
the element such as fire, water, earth, air.
In other words, they could reduce the known
universe to basic elements and many of them
were combining this knowledge or this speculation
with speculation that in every personality
there is certain amount of water element,
there is a certain amount of fire element,
there is certain amount of; so different personalities
would be a composition of different types
of you know elements in them with different
characteristics.
Now, this was common to almost all Milesian
thinkers and all most all Milesian thinkers
also accepted the fact that there was a basic
substance to all life, to all universe. It
was a basic substance in the sense that it
was something immutable, it was a foundation
of all other substances and it was infinite.
They just lasted and lasted and lasted without
any time bounds to its existence. So, this
belief in the fact that everything has a basic
substance which you cannot perhaps describe,
which you cannot empirically experience but,
which you cannot deny is a big part of Milesian
tradition. And the lot of what people like
Plato Socrates before him and Pythagoras was
saying goes back to this particular aspect
of milesian thinking. Mind you this is a different
thing then the faith systems like the Orphic
cults and so for where they said there is
a supreme bean and that is divine and my job
is to make myself as divine as possible.
It is what might be called the anthropomorphism,
is it not. Where as the milesian tradition
was not talking of any beings of the persons,
the Milesian tradition was talking about a
a substance which was the the undercurrent
of all substances. Their speculating on the
existence of one single explanation for life,
for the existence of different forms of objects
they were trying to formulate that all chemistry
on the planet all physics on the planet all
life on the planet could be traced back to
this one single substance. In other words
they were going into realms of speculative
philosophy very different from the religious
beliefs of people like the Orphic cults this
we must understand.
Because speculative philosophy leads to construction
of knowledge by the society in the sense in
which we have seen it earlier enquiry, speculation,
verification and so forth. So, the Milesian
tradition and it is basic belief in the substance
in my idea go into constitute the bases of
what happened on in Greece. In the next 100
years tradition could be attributed to around
6 century b c and afterwards the greatest
of these thinkers was Thales or the oldest
of these thinkers was Thales. Among other
things Thales is his the is the scientist
in Thales is uploaded significantly today,
because he is successfully predicted the onset
on an eclipse and it happened exactly as he
had predicted it on the date and times in
which he had predicted that occurrence of
this eclipse. It was a first time anybody
had done this.
So, Thales is conclude as a founding father
of modern astronomy by some people although
there is no work from Thales about which we
are aware we suggest that this would be the
case for this was Thales is claim to fame
as a early scientist. Then Thales also brought
in both geometry and trigonometry into Greece
from Egypt where it was already well known.
So, the foundations of modern mathematics
in Greece which came from Pythagoras onwards
could be attributed to Thales and his work
and geometry and trigonometry too.
Now, the other one of the three famous Milesian
school people was Anaximander. Now, Anaximander
emphasized very clearly that everything came
from this primal substance and he said this
primal substance was not water, it was not
air, it was not fire, it was none of these
because. He said, if you extinguish fire the
fire is stay extinguished if you drain the
water from a vessel and then boil it and it
becomes air it evaporate there is no more
water, but, the primal substance is not subject
to any such treatment. The primal substance
cannot be heated boiled and made to evaporate,
it cannot be made to you know chin state but,
not to sees to be.
So, Anaximander disagreed with Thales who
said water was perhaps the primal substance.
Anaximander said no, water can change states
he was aware that water heated becomes a wiper
and he says then how can water be the primal
substance. So, Anaximander was probably the
first one among the Greeks to argue that there
was a one primal substance which had nothing
to do with any of the forms of water, any
of the forms of fire, forms of earth which
people said to exist. So, these five elements
could be significant, but, they were not the
primal substance.
Now Anaximander of course,, is attributed
with the idea of having speculated about the
shape of the earth. Now, Anaximander is said
to have argued that the shape of the earth
was like a table taught and like a disc too.
In other words, he did not believe that the
world was a round has late a weeks proved,
but, he said it is a flat surface, but, there
was a secularity to it too. And most important
Anaximander, he suppose to have made the first
map he is a originator of cartography as a
science. There were two very great Greeks
who led to substantial advancement of knowledge
in later times in Europe, one was the person
who invented cartography and the other one
was who invented the art of righting history
Herodotus.
So, Herodotus wrote the history of the Persian
wars and thereby gave history as a branch
of knowledge it is full credibility. And Anaximander
drew the first maps which were not probably
to scale, but, which had cartographic correctness,
they knew, he knew where to put the mountains,
where to put the water, how to give a an approximation
through drawing of how to get from one place
to another. So, this is one great contribution
by Anaximander and the last thing which Anaximander
said which again made him immensely popular
is that the universe was a perpetual state
of motion nothing was in its place ever because
there was no place for anything everything
was in continuous motion continuous movement.
Now, in later times this particular statement
by Anaximander led to a whole new branch of
a thought among the Greeks who went into war
or battle intellectual battle with other Greeks
who took another side of Anaximander seriously
that everything is one single primal substance,
they became the Greek substantialists even
Plato Aristotle they were also substantialists.
There were others like alacritous who believed
well there is no such substance, everything
is changing, everything is moving, everything
is transforming. So, this also come form Anaximander
from another side of Anaximander. So, it is
very often stated that Anaximander is a founding
father of lot of thought which became sophisticated
in later generation Greeks and a lot of thought
which led to later day development of science
in the western world.
And the third person whom we have to consider
seriously 
is Anaxemenes. Anaxemenes is considered the
founding father of the whole Pythagorean tradition.
The Pythagorean tradition is tradition which
became very important because of the following
reasons, one Pythagoras was substantialist
he believed in the primal substance. He believed
that the primal substance this all in compassing
its infinite and so forth. But he thought
there was a way of finding this thing he thought
there was a way of understanding this thing.
So, there was lot of speculative writing into
which Pythagoras went in order to unravel
this primal substance and a lot of Pythagorean
mathematics was an attempt to unravel this
primal substance. So, the Pythagorean tradition
is said to be the first beginnings of the
modern tradition in modern science which believes
that the universe is subject to certain immutable
loss. And the purpose of science is to discover
these laws, I mean this is the belief which
starts after Newton.
But you can see that this belief goes back
as far back as the early milesian school and
more importantly to the Pythagorean tradition
which formulizes this. Now, I will not go
into guide details about other thinkers partly
because you studied them. But other reason
why I am not going into other details this
is the purpose in this class is not to introduce
you to Greek thought. Either the purpose was
to understand that there is a way in which
knowledge comes into being there is a way
which society constructs knowledge. And there
is a set of forces which are structured, there
is a set of forces which are communitous,
the forces of communitous directly correspond
to experience the forces of structure directly
correspond to faith.
Now, my purpose was to show that in the early
Greek world too there were both these traditions.
There was this tradition of faith and then
I briefly given you a gleams of the tradition
of communitous. Do you have any questions
on this? Would like, somebody like to speculate
a little on whether the world of Greeks as
you have seen here as similarity to something
else which you know from your studies your
knowledge.
Does it ring a bell, does it seem, oh this
happens somewhere else also kind of a thing,
no take a short I mean the verse come to verse
you will say something wrong is perfectly
fine, its like falling of a bike.
There was a specific
Right good which only means that my question
was totally wooly so I should ask it properly.
See the extensive faith system which the Greeks
had also existed along side this speculative
and enquiring tradition which was also part
of Greece. All i am trying to say is having
one side say this is what existed in Greece
does it look familiar that it existed else
were too.
Ah.
Indian system research
Ah that is right so expand on it a bit.
Yeah under the Indian system also they were
the people who acquired the astronomy and
mathematics and all that existed and see this
is also acquired to that and there was familiarly
the process of faith and whatever else.
Right, does it seem familiar, you see the
basic system was a system of incredibly complex
rituals. In fact most of Yajurvedhum is Karmakandum
which means organization of rituals. Rigvedham
bit of ritual organization, but, Yajurvedhum
the second the most extensive one which we
know today, most of it was on how to organize
this . So, it was very Orphic in that sense
all though you did not have perfect theology
here.
Once again, you had the idea of sacrifice
as strongly in this in this Vedic Hinduism
as you find in the Orphic cult. The idea of
transmigration is very strongly prevalent
in vedic Hinduism and the performance of rituals
is a way to transmigrate to a better life,
is it not. And parallely there existed in
incredible speculative stream is it not, the
whole lot of Upanishads were speculative in
work. There is one particular Upanishad which
I think has only 11 verses, the Mandikya Upanishad,
it is only 11 couple x y thing or 3 lines
know maximum 2 lines, 11 only. But incredibly
profound in its depth, obviously, much much
later it became the source of the origin of
a philosophy and debates around that philosophy
that became the basis of enquiry into incredible
variety of belief systems that existed in
India that time. But much later, much later
around the sixth century A D, I think there
was a man called Goudapada. Have you heard
of Goudapada, have you studied Goudapada,
you heard of Goudapada evidently to tell me
about Goudapada.
.
We will just heard of him Goudapada is referred
to by Adhishankara as Parmacharya, that is
he was his teacher’s teacher. I think Shankara’s
teacher was Govindapada, if I was not mistaken
and who was a student of Goudapada? He do
not even know Goudapada was his real name,
because Gouda is West Bengal, Gouda Desham
is Bengal. So, Goudapada might just mean a
man from the Bengal heard something. But anyway,
Goudapada wrote an absolute classic called
the Mandukya Karika which was significantly
an attempted an expose a of the tiny Mandukya
Upanishad. But in the process he ended up
making a survey of all belief systems that
that existed at that time..
So, this speculative 11 couplet speculative
piece was later used by Goudapada to make
an enquiry into the 26 six types of Darshanas
or belief systems which existed in his time.
And one of the biggest Darshanas which Goudapada
took up for analysis at that time was Buddhism.
Buddhism because at that time Buddhism was
extensive and very popular among the masses,
I am talking about the sixth century.
And Goudapada picks up one another great work
on Buddhism and highlights it as this is what
Buddhism is, this was by a great Buddhist
teacher called Nagarjuna. Have you heard of
Nagarjuna? He did not act in movies in those
days, do you heard of Nagarjuna? Well, Nagarjuna
was probably, the last of the great Buddhist
scholars, what you know today as main streams
of Buddhism, not the Mahayana versions you
find and Bodhgaya or in Indochina or or Burma
know. But, the speculative versions, which
you find in Chan or Zen that kind of Buddhism
goes directly back to Nagarjuna who wrote
a book called Madhyamika Karika about second
century A D, I think. And it is stated by
latest scholars, today’s scholars philosophies
scholars a big debate is that Goudapada’s
Mandukya Karika was nothing but, an attempt
to revalidate Madhyamika Karika of Nagarjuna.
In other words there are many philosophy scholars
argue that Goudapada was actually nothing
other than a Buddhist himself. And there are
lot of followers of adhishankara the Adhvaithik
scholars who say no no no no no Goudapada
was a very radical hindu who thought almost
like a Buddhist was not a Buddhist. But the
long and short of at all is this I am talking
of the speculative tradition something gets
returned god knows when may be 6000 B C or
2000 B C, I do not know when these Mandukya
Karika and such other Upanishads were written,
but, something gets written at that times
needs to an incredible bought of speculation.
Almost a thousand years later and thinking
in the hands of Goudapada and from Goudapada
it goes to Adhishankara. So, Adhishankara’s
Bhramhasutram which is the his interpretation
of the Upanishads you find his almost hundred
percent Nagarjuna Karika. And he attributes
it to his Parmacharya that is to Goudapada
which is the reason where number of people
believe the Shankara system which itself is
nothing but, Buddhism with the few cosmetics.
There is no such thing they say as Adhvaita,
there is only a modified Buddhism which is
modified by Shankara which is the reason the
other Acharyaas like Madhavacharya and Ramanujacharya
not so much Ramanuja but, Madhvacharya was
mad with Shankara. You know in Kannada he
reduce some choices expletive to refer to
Shankara, because he was you know is it this
man sold out to the Buddha he called him Prachand
Bouddha.
Now, why I am saying all these things is,
here is a parallel that you find to what was
happening in Greece. A system with enormous
faith in rituals and subsequent to subsequent
to the Vedik Hinduism, you find the Puranik
mythological Hinduism which grows with incredible
speed 48,000 gods and some more thousands
of rituals oriented towards this 48,000 gods
and there are what is known as little Hinduism,
big Hinduism. Big Hinduism is the one involving
trans sub continental gods like Rama, Krishna
and all that and the little Hinduism as jillions
of small local gods you name it you have everything.
So, you have this huge systems of faith a
lot of it is Orphic and you have a tremendously
active powerful line was speculation which
even at one point of time went into works,
very much like the Greeks into mathematics
into geometry into speculations of nuclear
nature and so forth.
So this is what I am trying to tell you that
there is a parallel, there is a parallel which
you find here. But what happened in Greece
which broke through into a realm of creating
new ways of constructing knowledge in a society
it did not happen here. It did not happen
here for one reason or another due to the
different histories. The big break in the
Indian subcontinent came with the increasing
Islamic annexation of the subcontinent from
about 1000 A D onwards. That was the beginning
of the period when I think this classic syncratic
Hindu systems lost confidence considerably.
A lot of Hinduism went into hiding because
for the first time in the history of the subcontinent,
there was a belief system which was converting
people into their beliefs through force of
violence. Not that there is anything wrong
or right in this, but, it is part of the Islamic
faith that the whole world should believe
and be believers only . So, that was the aggressiveness
with which Islam entered in this country around
1000 A D and that substantially changed the
directions in which Hindu speculative thought,
philosophical thought was going it made the
whole of Hindu religion introverted. The big
difference you find for instance in the north
is the culture of big temples vanished in
the north from around 10, 11 century. Most
temples were basically, not very cone speakers
did not draw much attention to themselves.
Whereas in the south older habits of big time
temple construction perceived right up to
the 19th century right up to the 20th century
too because in the south that kind of an Islamic
culture was not so profound.
So, I am just trying to tell you here that
history is a process through which a lot of
things can happen, history is process through
which not just a structure and communitous
in a given geographical terrain can operate.
But it is a process through which a lot of
external forces can also come into play in
a system in a relationship between a particular
communitous and structure.
So, we have the broad comparison what we shall
be doing from here on is too next week I shall
give you construction of the history of Christianity
and the growth of church as a major social
economical and political institution in European
history right up to the 13th and 14th century
A D. Beginning with the consolidation of the
church consolidation of Christianity as organized
through churches in the sixth century right
up to the 16th century when this church itself
was facing. It is facing, its own challenge
from within in its own structure I look at
the history of Christianity the history of
western world what the society was like and
how the kind of society that existed and how
the kind of belief systems that the church
propogated mutually aided each other and enabled
each other to grow.
Till finally, the speculative tradition was
rebound in the west and how during this growth
during what was known as a dark ages in Europe,
knowledge itself groove in a very limited
form thorough what was known as scholastic.
This scholastic approach to knowledge was
the only permitted method approach so we look
at scholastic then what it did, what it could
not do and so forth. By the time we have come
to the end of scholastics, we have come to
the modern period and we can reconstruct the
history and look at the collapse of feudalism
in the west. The rise of nations states which
were transforming Europe the tremendous revolution
of commerce and trade which led to the rise
of the cities and the merchant and the trading
class so that Europe was all such for a transformation.
And with the split in the church with the
reformation of Christianity, one last blow
was struck for the rise of modernity.
So, I shall take you on from there to the
emergence of the thing called age of enlightenment.
How in all this process whole new worldview
developed not about how to look at the world,
how to understand the world almost in a very
pristine sense people in the age of enlightenment
had the mind sets of old Greeks. They work
with much better tools; they constructed and
created much better tools. or instance, Descartes
was not only a great mathematician, you know
Descartes is a founder of modern calculus
so in many respects and Newton owes a lot
and lot of his physics too Descartes so Descartes
not only had he not only created calculus
and linear algebra.
He also as a great mathematician who thought
that you could logically prove their existence
of god through Descartes was a very devout
catholic all the time had trouble the structure
communitous problem was very profound in Descartes
his experience was showed that the world could
be seen more and more and more it experience
more and more and more but, a name was this
very powerful faith in which he was conditioned
all through.
So, this was a not only that in his lifetime
it was extremely dangerous to talk anything
about the world which did Christianity did
not approve church did not approve. So, Descartes
has reasons to affair of himself and a bit
of rare of world around so as a result of
which you find Descartes making very interesting
speculations, logical speculations will do
that when we look into that when we come into
Descartes. He was creating very interesting
thing of logical speculations on why there
should be a god. So, on the one hand the logic
extents to such brilliant mathematics and
then also creates so this was the age of enlightenment
right the age of enlightenment also produces
brilliant theices on the nature of human beings.
A lot of we know as the foundations of modern
psychology arise from the writings of people
of that time first time human being was thought
of as a thinking person. So, how he thought,
how the mind worked was very important for
people of the age of enlightenment. And most
important, the big movement in rance which
started called the encyclopedic movement.
It was believed by the group of people who
are constituting this movement that everything
and anything on earth must be first classified,
it must be discussed, analyzed, studied and
distinguish from other things, in other words
the earliest ideas of creating an encyclopedia
came up in rance in the early part of 18th
century and went right through the 18th century.
In some respect, we can say that the encyclopedic
movement in the intellectual ferment, it created
lay at the heart of many things that happens
towards the end of 18th century, finally,
leading to the very revolution rance.
So, we look at that too, then we look at what
was happening in the other side of the channel
in England and Scotland other ideas are growing.
The birth of great ideas of democracy, a lot
of what exist in United States today as a
constitution goes back to the writings of
john lock. So, we look at that the world discovered
not only this it discovered a new way of political
levy and by the 19th century economics has
advanced. So, significantly that we could
see the world had learnt to live economically
also in great depth and great meaningfulness
in productivity. Well, have a nice weekend.
