You nitwit! Athens isn't in Ionia!
I know it. I'm using "Ionia" here as a catchphrase in the sense of "Ionian" to discuss what we might call
the "Hellenic Enlightenment" -- the development of (speaking loosely here) "Modernist" and "classical liberal" ideas in ancient Greek culture.
"Greater Ionia", perhaps.
"DAVID GERGEN: ... The founding fathers seemed to be steeped in the classics, great admirers of the Greeks, especially the Romans, when you think of Jefferson or Adams, or Madison.
JOHN HEATH: ... The founding fathers were steeped in the classics in Greek and Latin and in the traditions of the democracy of Athens, the republicanism of ancient Rome, and these things influenced their interpretation of what a "polis," a community should be.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: ... I think especially now in our own culture, we were interested in the cultural values. And that consists of a core menu or protocols of consensual government, free enterprise, private properties, civil liberties, free speech.
DAVID GERGEN: All of these institutions originated with the Greeks.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: We can't trace them any earlier than the Greeks, and yet they are adapted, rejected, modified. But that blueprint survives in the West."
Anchor NAME tag(s) here for following article -- link to:
http://members.tripod.com/~doggo/doggionia.html#enchantment
http://members.tripod.com/~doggo/doggionia.html#ionianenchantment
"Then I discovered evolution. Suddenly--that is not too strong a word--I saw the world in a wholly new way. This epiphany Iowed to my mentor Ralph Chermock ....he handed me a copy of Ernst Mayr's 1942 Systematics and the Origin of Species. ... The thin volume in the plain blue cover was one of the New Synthesis works, uniting the nineteenth-century Darwiniantheory of evolution and modern genetics. By giving a theoretical structure to natural history, it vastly expanded the Linnaeanenterprise. A tumbler fell somewhere in my mind, and a door opened to a new world. I was enthralled, couldn't stopthinking about the implications evolution has for classification and for the rest of biology. And for philosophy. And for justabout everything. Static pattern slid into fluid process. My thoughts, embryonically those of a modern biologist, traveledalong a chain of causal events, from mutations that alter genes to evolution that multiplies species, to species that assembleinto faunas and floras. Scale expanded, and turned continuous. By inwardly manipulating time and space, I found I couldclimb the steps in biological organization from microscopic particles in cells to the forests that clothe mountain slopes. A new enthusiasm surged through me. The animals and plants I loved so dearly reentered the stage as lead players in a granddrama. Natural history was validated as a real science.
I had experienced the Ionian Enchantment. That recently coined expression I borrow from the physicist and historian Gerald Holton. It means a belief in the unity of the sciences--a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that theworld is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws. Its roots go back to Thales of Miletus, in Ionia, inthe sixth century B.C. The legendary philosopher was considered by Aristotle two centuries later to be the founder of thephysical sciences. He is of course remembered more concretely for his belief that all matter consists ultimately of water.Although the notion is often cited as an example of how far astray early Greek speculation could wander, its real significanceis the metaphysics it expressed about the material basis of the world and the unity of nature. "
(my emphasis -- ed.
Wilson notes: "The idea of the Ionian Enchantment is introduced and
Einstein's expression of it used as an illustration by Gerald Holton
in Einstein, History, and Other Passions"
(N.b., I see several different entries for this book on Amazon.com with different reviews.)
"Mixing scientific insights with mystical ones, Rucker argues for the possibility of transcendence in rationality, especially in his nonfiction books like Infinity and the Mind (1982, recently re-printed in paper from Princeton University Press).
'One of the basic things that we humans do is to perceive patterns', Rucker says. 'To sense the universe as a single undivided whole is to see a certain kind of large-scale pattern. In order to feel that it is possible to discover useful things, it is encouraging to believe that the universe is one unified thing, and that you yourself are an integral part of the whole. For then it is more likely that the patterns you perceive have a good correspondence with the deep structure of reality'. "
"When the Greeks spoke of "agora," they meant a place for political discussion, jury trials, and a market. In other words, agora was the center of Greek life.
In October 9, 2009, the Spanish movie producer, Alejandro Amenabar, released a film he pointedly named Agora, in which he zeroed in the clash of Greek and Christian civilizations in the fourth and fifth centuries in Alexandria, Egypt.
The protagonist of Agora is Hypatia, c. 370 - 415, daughter of the mathematician Theon who headed a school of philosophy and science in Alexandria. Following her father, Hypatia became a philosopher and mathematician. She taught the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in both Athens and Alexandria. In Alexandria, she defended the Greek way of life against the Christians who sought to abolish it.
In Agora, Rachel Weisz, beautiful and eloquent, very successfully played the demanding role of Hypatia. ...
The movie is a masterpiece of cinematography, acting and drama. ...
Perhaps Agora is a metaphor for our enormous loss from the violent eclipse of Greek culture. It may also be a warning of the emerging hubris coming out of the clash of civilizations in our time."
"That was the peculiar gift of the Greeks, to perceive the beauty of familiar, every-day things, and their art and literature which was concerned to reveal this beauty, is the great example of classic art and literature as distinguished from romantic. The Greeks were the classicists of antiquity and they are still today the preeminent classicists. What marked all they did, the classic stamp, is a direct simplicity in expressing the significance of actual life. It was there the Greek artists and poets found what they wanted. ...
Their desire was to express truthfully what lay at hand, which they saw as beautiful and full of meaning. ...
That is primarily why the Greeks were not romantic. Facts were full of interest to them. They found enough beauty and delight in them to have no desire to go beyond.
But to the Romans facts were not beautiful nor, in themselves, interesting."
The Roman Way by Edith Hamilton.
Pages 161, 165.