BF2S Forums EE Chats 2142

ah yes, the pyramids, a vision of the symbolic and imaginative worldview of the old kingdom. absolutely nothing to do with humanities knowledge or extra-scientific values going on there. pharaonic egypt was notably led by a caste of chartered surveyors.

next you’re going to tell me that europe’s gothic cathedrals are so prized because they are the high point of stone masonry.

why is an avowed atheist and ultra-rationalist so interested in ecclesiastical architecture anyway?

what next? 'stonehenge: the world's greatest tribute to stone supply-chain management and logistics'?

Last edited by uziq (2024-12-26 01:53:44)

i've published a 600 page book on it and read most of the other leading sources in the field -- trust me, i know, in excruciating detail.

the point being, dingbat, that the fucking ancient egyptians and their pyramids had an integrated worldview that didn't arbitrarily pit theoretical or applied sciences against non-technical/non-instrumental forms of knowledge. (i won't say 'humanities' here because it's ridiculous to talk about ancient civilizations that were magical thinkers and hardly recognisable as renaissance 'humanists'.) none of these megastructures you point to are even legible unless you try to grasp them holistically, and within the context of their worldview, belief system, values, art, culture, religion ... they didn't set out to build the pyramids to solve an interesting engineering problem. the society needed a vision, and believe it or not, engineers typically aren't visionaries.

there are plenty of marvels of ancient engineering that fell into ruin because they had only instrumental function and didn't connect to any spiritual or cultural belief. many roman aqueducts, for instance. just as interesting from an engineering point of view but they're not quite the tourist draws of the 'mystical' and 'mysterious' pyramids, are they, which of course are metonyms for an entire cosmology and worldview which transfixes us.

and my whole point is that your hare-brained soft bigotry over 'STEM' is a very, very recent phenomenon, contemporary geeks who have turned their incuriosity and philistinism into a point of pride. 19th century physicists read literature, dilbert. they probably even read theology. you masturbate over teenage comic material and seem to think that spiritual sights are of great significance because 'how the heck did they transport those sarsens for 100s of kilometers?!?'

Last edited by uziq (2024-12-26 02:26:07)

you do in your adopted home of australia though, don’t you, migrant? the speech marks are meant to be imitating you.

believe it or not, the archeological scholarship on stonehenge - like the books i’ve edited - does utilise modern measurement for the sake of their explications. it wouldn’t be very informative to speculate about neolithic metrology.

Last edited by uziq (2024-12-26 09:07:07)