I wonder if the resort to oracles wasn't somehow bound up with what Julian Jaynes' refers to as the Dawn of Consciousness. According to him, people formerly believed that the "self" was actually the voice of the gods speaking to them, and he speculates on the transition to free will that took place and the disruption and sense of loss that people must have experienced as the gods "quit speaking to them." Perhaps the people alive during that transition era viewed oracles as those lucky few that could still "hear the gods" inside their heads.
Your closing words about Science and the comparison to the fate of the oracles is very interesting. As with many other parts of the language that are being subverted in the service of power, the term "Science" has been increasingly appropriated and misapplied to activities that have no other purpose but the maintenance or strengthening of the power structure.
Also, it seems to me that the "loss of faith" in Science many are experiencing is also a result of observing repeated failures of it even by some who had noble intentions. "Good science," like many modern skills, seems increasingly to be turning into a lost art, along with its Engineering handmaiden.
I think you noticed that this post was inspired by Julian Jaynes, even though I didn't mention him! Indeed, according to him, oracles appeared when people ceased being able to hear voices themselves, and had to rely on professional seers who still could.
Just being picky about your references to ancient Greece, but it was Herodotus and not Heraclitus who is sometimes called the "Father of History" and he lived in the 5th century BC, not the 4th century. And he preceded Cicero by approximately four, not two, centuries.
I'll have to read some of this history you are talking about. The language is beautiful. I was reading the poetry of Friedrich Holderlin on the way to the conference. He still loved the Gods and seemed to want to bring them back to European consciousness. At the same time he was a devout Christian. Tragically, he went mad. They say he got too close to the fire..
I prefer caution using myths, ancients millinery cultures had a lot of time to warp a lot in a simple myth! If we look at Osirean saga, we have accounts from Romans and Greek that it had at least 8 "levels" of understanding and probably more if we position it in the contest of 3 theogonies interwond in their "Myth of Creation": Amun of Thebes, Ptha of Memphis and Osiris of the delta are the path that Ra as unknowable god take from unformed emptiness (act of Amun-Ra) making the still not manifested potentiality (Ptha-Ra) culminating in the cycle of eternal return to the formed eternity.
Sphinx and his myth are surely complex almost at the same level, Egyptian, Greek and Roman had mystery cults (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries) explaining different aspects and interpretations....
Today we are used to having our "myths" in science as an all encompassing explanation, science have our trust as "Creation Myth" explaining to us how we come to be and our "destiny", the answers to powerful subliminal eternal question of mankind! We really try to answer, but we got a stop with the Big Bang because how something come from nothing still elude us and we logically NEED that at the beginning something come from nothing because we have entropy to account, our myth of "destiny" is our modelling the future. We can't model future outside quite restrined conditions engeneered to ster resoults as in our creations!
Global predictions of a sngle marginal planet as our is almost impossible, we can model our beaviour if we keep our "buisness as usual" as did "Limits of Growth" using constrains implicit in the beaviour but adding new elements derange modelling. Our knowlege of the past is also quite biased and fragmentary so crating a "big picture" as reference is almost impossible, we aare quite unsure how is possible that life did't freeze to deat at the beginning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faint_young_Sun_paradox).....
We need myths to reassure us in front of the vastness of creation and to give us a direction for the future because without we can be quite self destructing, relygions are always born to help us to survive until we can get to understand our past and future:
Revelation 4:21
"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
Faith is needed before we can get understanding an live "seeing God" as a guide.
I wonder if the resort to oracles wasn't somehow bound up with what Julian Jaynes' refers to as the Dawn of Consciousness. According to him, people formerly believed that the "self" was actually the voice of the gods speaking to them, and he speculates on the transition to free will that took place and the disruption and sense of loss that people must have experienced as the gods "quit speaking to them." Perhaps the people alive during that transition era viewed oracles as those lucky few that could still "hear the gods" inside their heads.
Your closing words about Science and the comparison to the fate of the oracles is very interesting. As with many other parts of the language that are being subverted in the service of power, the term "Science" has been increasingly appropriated and misapplied to activities that have no other purpose but the maintenance or strengthening of the power structure.
Also, it seems to me that the "loss of faith" in Science many are experiencing is also a result of observing repeated failures of it even by some who had noble intentions. "Good science," like many modern skills, seems increasingly to be turning into a lost art, along with its Engineering handmaiden.
I think you noticed that this post was inspired by Julian Jaynes, even though I didn't mention him! Indeed, according to him, oracles appeared when people ceased being able to hear voices themselves, and had to rely on professional seers who still could.
Just being picky about your references to ancient Greece, but it was Herodotus and not Heraclitus who is sometimes called the "Father of History" and he lived in the 5th century BC, not the 4th century. And he preceded Cicero by approximately four, not two, centuries.
Oops.... thanks a lot. Correcting!
I'll have to read some of this history you are talking about. The language is beautiful. I was reading the poetry of Friedrich Holderlin on the way to the conference. He still loved the Gods and seemed to want to bring them back to European consciousness. At the same time he was a devout Christian. Tragically, he went mad. They say he got too close to the fire..
I prefer caution using myths, ancients millinery cultures had a lot of time to warp a lot in a simple myth! If we look at Osirean saga, we have accounts from Romans and Greek that it had at least 8 "levels" of understanding and probably more if we position it in the contest of 3 theogonies interwond in their "Myth of Creation": Amun of Thebes, Ptha of Memphis and Osiris of the delta are the path that Ra as unknowable god take from unformed emptiness (act of Amun-Ra) making the still not manifested potentiality (Ptha-Ra) culminating in the cycle of eternal return to the formed eternity.
Sphinx and his myth are surely complex almost at the same level, Egyptian, Greek and Roman had mystery cults (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries) explaining different aspects and interpretations....
Today we are used to having our "myths" in science as an all encompassing explanation, science have our trust as "Creation Myth" explaining to us how we come to be and our "destiny", the answers to powerful subliminal eternal question of mankind! We really try to answer, but we got a stop with the Big Bang because how something come from nothing still elude us and we logically NEED that at the beginning something come from nothing because we have entropy to account, our myth of "destiny" is our modelling the future. We can't model future outside quite restrined conditions engeneered to ster resoults as in our creations!
Global predictions of a sngle marginal planet as our is almost impossible, we can model our beaviour if we keep our "buisness as usual" as did "Limits of Growth" using constrains implicit in the beaviour but adding new elements derange modelling. Our knowlege of the past is also quite biased and fragmentary so crating a "big picture" as reference is almost impossible, we aare quite unsure how is possible that life did't freeze to deat at the beginning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faint_young_Sun_paradox).....
We need myths to reassure us in front of the vastness of creation and to give us a direction for the future because without we can be quite self destructing, relygions are always born to help us to survive until we can get to understand our past and future:
Revelation 4:21
"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
Faith is needed before we can get understanding an live "seeing God" as a guide.