TIL: Today I Learned

[Lohrenswald]

Well, bosons are the force-carriers and the stuff that makes up the stuff that makes up everything

I mean, they don't make up fermions lol

also like, it seems to me there's no violation of quantum mechanics as it used to be understood, the exclusion principle seems to me to have been clear from when it was made to only have applied to fermions and not bosons. Though I haven't really been given a historical perspective

also I mean "transparent" doesn't seem to me to be different from what you call ethereal or incorporeal, but maybe I chose bad words
though they're massless, of course (except the higgs boson, apparantly)

 

[Birdjaguar]

Also, bosuns whistle. While they work, none-the-less.

 

[Arakhor]

I mean, they don't make up fermions lol

Well, no, but without gluons, quarks would never bind together to make up protons, neutrons etc. It's a complicated business, this.

also like, it seems to me there's no violation of quantum mechanics as it used to be understood, the exclusion principle seems to me to have been clear from when it was made to only have applied to fermions and not bosons. Though I haven't really been given a historical perspective

You might well be right. What self-study I've made of quantum mechanics didn't really touch on bosons.

also I mean "transparent" doesn't seem to me to be different from what you call ethereal or incorporeal, but maybe I chose bad words though they're massless, of course (except the higgs boson, apparantly)

Well, transparent literally means to show through, so I was using ethereal more to mean that two things could be in the same place at once, rather than simply being able to see through them.

 

[Takhisis]

TIL, British colonialist (?) feeds Chinese (?) people with seeds like Pigeons. I convinced they really think they were literally a kind of animal.

That looks like French Indochina to me.

 

[H4run]

That looks like French Indochina to me.

Actually I saw this first from my facebook, the description is in French, after that I try to search it on youtube to post it here. I just found this amazingly disturbing.

 

[Lexicus]

IMO racism is precisely tied to the identification of the human with an animal. So such behavior is not particularly surprising, any more than "no dogs or Chinese" signs in the international (European) settlement in Shanghai in the early 20th century.

 

[H4run]

IMO racism is precisely tied to the identification of the human with an animal. So such behavior is not particularly surprising, any more than "no dogs or Chinese" signs in the international (European) settlement in Shanghai in the early 20th century.

I'm quite acquaintance with Dutch colonialism in Indonesia, through the work of Pramoedya and the like, what I understand is they never see the natives as some kind of animal, but they do form a racial caste system, where the white people on the top, then the Indo come as a second class (mix white), the Chinese and at the bottom the natives. So the concept of other race as a kind of subhuman or animal is alien to me, except how they treat Aborigine in Australia, but I take it as a unique case that is not to be generalized.

edit: however I do remember long time ago I found there is something like human zoo that happened during the colonial time, I learn it also in TIL.

 

[Lexicus]

Imo the ideological roots of racism are to be found at the shift in the way Europeans viewed humanity: from the spiritual unity of Christianity to the 'modern' view of man as just another animal. The context for this was the discovery of the Americas, with people who lived in ways so radically different from what Europeans were familiar with that Adamism, the monogenesis of humankind, came into question and was ultimately discarded. And at around that point you begin to see a search for a way to make sense of these people and one of the earliest explanations, which has never fully died, was of course that the "primitives" represented an intermediate step between men and beasts.

In the United States black people were explicitly regarded sort of as animals who could talk. You can read Jefferson basically denying that they experience any higher mental functions: just lust rather than romantic love for example, and that's actually a rather enlightened view for the time.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I know I'm treading into dangerous territory by asking this, but if it's thought that off-balance gut bacteria might be related to autism, might vaccines be indirectly the cause of autism: i.e. in some kids, vaccines throw the gut bacteria off, and then that causes autism?

I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up being sorry I even wondered this out loud.

 

[H4run]

This is so interesting

from the spiritual unity of Christianity to the 'modern' view of man as just another animal.

Is Darwin here acts as the turning point?

The context for this was the discovery of the Americas, with people who lived in ways so radically different from what Europeans were familiar with that Adamism, the monogenesis of humankind, came into question and was ultimately discarded.

Can you elaborate more into this? Because surely they had contact with other different culture, be that estrange or similarly isolated culture (West and South Africa?), how is the native American becomes unique in this? And how the discovery of America challenged Adamism?

 

[Lexicus]

Is Darwin here acts as the turning point?

Oh no, Darwin was long after what I'm talking about. If anything was the turning point it was Townsend's parable of the goats and dogs, which argued that human society was governed by laws like those governing the animal kingdom. That was published almost a century before the Origin of Species IIRC. But really there is no turning point and this whole thing is a gradual development.

Can you elaborate more into this? Because surely they had contact with other different culture, be that estrange or similarly isolated culture (West and South Africa?), how is the native American becomes unique in this? And how the discovery of America challenged Adamism?

Late medieval/early modern Europeans had virtually no experience of people living with Stone Age technology and without states, which they found in the Americas. There were African peoples living like that but mostly in the interior of the continent which Europeans did not penetrate until the 19th century. And there were of course the Australian aborigines but they weren't discovered until centuries after the Americas.

The discovery of the Americas triggered an enormous debate about the origin of the people there, which is what led to many intellectuals challenging the idea that all humans had a single common ancestor. Other explanations which were consistent with the Bible were also advanced at the time (e.g. that the indigenous Americans were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel).

 

[Birdjaguar]

This is so interesting

Is Darwin here acts as the turning point?

Can you elaborate more into this? Because surely they had contact with other different culture, be that estrange or similarly isolated culture (West and South Africa?), how is the native American becomes unique in this? And how the discovery of America challenged Adamism?

The Bible does not explain the existence of Native Americans; it does account for the other "races". This called bible inerrancy into question. Where do we put these people, if they are people.

Then when Joseph Smith "wrote" the Book of Mormon, he provided an explanation for them and that helped his following grow. The 19th C was one that challenged Christianity on may fronts and drove a retreat into
fundamentalism as Protestantism splintered and many European sects immigrated to America. Religion in the US covered a wide spectrum of choices that included everything from adventism to Jehovah's Witness to Christian Science and Unitarianism. etc. Then throw Darwin in on top of that.

 

[Takhisis]

Imo the ideological roots of racism are to be found at the shift in the way Europeans viewed humanity: from the spiritual unity of Christianity to the 'modern' view of man as just another animal. The context for this was the discovery of the Americas, with people who lived in ways so radically different from what Europeans were familiar with that Adamism, the monogenesis of humankind, came into question and was ultimately discarded. And at around that point you begin to see a search for a way to make sense of these people and one of the earliest explanations, which has never fully died, was of course that the "primitives" represented an intermediate step between men and beasts.

In the United States black people were explicitly regarded sort of as animals who could talk. You can read Jefferson basically denying that they experience any higher mental functions: just lust rather than romantic love for example, and that's actually a rather enlightened view for the time.

Hmm yes, profitable otherisms had been found e.g. with Jews charging interest on Christian financiers and Christians charging interest on Jews because it was a sin only if you did it to those of your own religion, and in fact in the Spanish colonies (and IIRC also the Portuguese ones but it gets confusing because of the union of the crowns) slavery of Christianised natives was forbidden by the Catholic Church so the quite impious (even by the standards of the time) conquistadors had to find workarounds to exploit the populace (not that the Church could exercise that much control).

I know I'm treading into dangerous territory by asking this

Oh yes you are.

 

[H4run]

Hmm yes, profitable otherisms had been found e.g. with Jews charging interest on Christian financiers and Christians charging interest on Jews because it was a sin only if you did it to those of your own religion, and in fact in the Spanish colonies (and IIRC also the Portuguese ones but it gets confusing because of the union of the crowns) slavery of Christianised natives was forbidden by the Catholic Church so the quite impious (even by the standards of the time) conquistadors had to find workarounds to exploit the populace (not that the Church could exercise that much control).

I thought the Afircan slavery were the first racial based enslavement which previously Slavery mostly religiously based (ex: the Christian enslaved the Pagan). Are you sure the Catholic institution against it? Isn't Portuguese and Spanish Jesuits who went to Japan also carried with them African slave? the most notable is Yasuke, who is a William Adams like African slave (turned Samurai) who was originated from East Africa.

 

[Kyriakos]

TIL that Swedenborg thought (among other things) that he spoke with the spirit of Aristotle.
"Aristotle, it may be remarked, is among sane spirits in the other life, but many of his followers are among the foolish."
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16044/16044-h/16044-h.htm

 

[Gori the Grey]

George Chapman thought the same of Homer.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I thought the Afircan slavery were the first racial based enslavement which previously Slavery mostly religiously based (ex: the Christian enslaved the Pagan).

classical greeks would enslave other greeks

 

[H4run]

classical greeks would enslave other greeks

The helod/t right? The enslavement of POW is common, but it is not racially based, even the enslavement of Greek by the Roman. It was a common code back then, when you get defeated you and your household were enslaved. But because it was not racially based there was an escape, while for the African they was no escape

 

[Lohrenswald]

The helod/t right?

way more than that

But because it is not racially based there is an escape, while for the African they were no escape

there is something to that I guess, at least for the romans, but I'm not sure if this goes for all other slaveholding societies

 

[H4run]

I may miss something but African Slavery was an avant garde for its kind as far as my limited knowledge know. Even the Slav were enslaved not because they were Slav, but because they were Pagan. The travelouge of Jewish merchant name Ben Yiju told about how his Indian slave Ashu was thrown himself to slavery for profit, and plan to quit only when he had sufficient money, and he get an income of artisan. So it was so much different from how we precieved slavery in modern time which pretty much based on African American slavery. Mmm