[tied] Re: Why borrow 'seven'? (was: IE right & 10)

> The calendar and stories about which
> things
> > > are sacred, like the moon, were both ways of describing what
> only
> > > later got to be called nature. In other words, this
> understanding
> > of
> > > weeks also spread because it was useful, not just because the
> moon
> > > was considered sacred.
> > >
> > > ...or so it seems given the evidence we now have.
> > >
> >
> > I know. It was their version of quantum mechanics.
> > But all civilisations will have to deal with the problem of the
> > starting point of the chain of causation. There must necesarily

be

> > a 'primus movens' or 'prima causa', otherwise it's turtles all

the

> > way down. Something that is directly connected to 'the other

side'.

> >
>
> Are you saying that it is confrontation with this question that
> caused the splitting of knowledge about nature and knowledge that
> you just have to have faith in? You might be right, but I think

that

> it might not have happened until much later. An ancient pagan

could

> be a cold scientist, patriotic politician and religious savant,
> without using double think. After Hellenistic times, from whatever
> source, you get a tension between "Jerusalem" and "Athens" which

had

> only been an undercurrent felt by the deepest thinkers, like

perhaps

> Plato, before then.

I used to think so too. It's standard fare to divide the world into
objective IE and subjective Middle East, but I think it goes much
further back. And the reason is a vague impression I get from the
overlapping set of terms from Møller's and Manansala's list; the
whole 'this side' and 'the other side' terminology. A very old
metaphor that recurs in all the crossing-the-river terminology of
passinng to the other world. As exactly as I can say it: the set
of 'semantic vectors' needed to span the semantic space described by
the Møller-Manansala set includes one to describe that dichotomy,
namely *(H-)bh/p-r/l- "across, life, grain, offspring" etc.

>
> ...But to turn this question into a linguistic and indeed
> etymological question: Does anyone have a word for "Nature" (as
> in "natural order", or a "law of nature", or "what is natural for
> man") from any language that was not influenced by Greek?
>


> I probably have to explain this a bit more in order to make sure I
> am not misunderstood. Physis was of course an old word referring

to

> growth, and more generally, existance involving change
> and "becoming". It came to refer to a metaphysical concept:
> the "way", the "rules", by which *all* things change and interact.
> In other words, we post-Greeks believe that apart from the normal
> existance of a thing, there is another type of existence, because
> there is a set or "rules" which determine how all of nature works.
> This in turn leads to the separation of faith and science.
>
> Best Regards
> Andrew