Gerry wrote

> I'll repeat this once more for the folks in the Peanut Gallery --
> before Marx and Darwin arrived on the scene, nineteenth century
> scientists were able to meld both the thesis and antithesis into a
> workable synthesis. Thus, art and science walked hand in hand.
> Marx came along and stood Hegel on his head and simplified
> philisophical discourse. This in turn caused a wedge to be driven
> between art and science resulting in scientists today being so
> super reductionist that one hand has no idea what the other one is
> doing.

Gerry, the wedge you speak of between art and science occurred before
Marx. Its ultimate source lies in the Greek separation between the
spiritual "ideal" and the materialistic "real". Nevertheless as late
as the Renaissance there was a general acceptance in agreement with
Aristotle, that Ars and techne were the same; "a capacity to do or
make something with a correct understanding of the principle
involved," and Art as a branch of knowledge was considered to be a
form of practical science. Nevertheless the breach was made with
Descartes insistence that the res cogitans of the "human rational
soul" was completely separate from the res extensa of the physical
material world. With the Grand Encyclopedia of Diderot and other
Enlightenment thinkers, technology increasingly came to be seen as
divorced from Art, a finding which was confirmed by the pastoral
Romantic Artists rejection of the technology of the "dark Satanic
Mills" of the Industrial Revolution.

This idealistic scepticism towards modernism has contributed to
producing the "two cultures" conflict as described by the British
physicist and philosopher C. P. Snow. Snow's basic thesis was that
the breakdown of communication between the sciences and the
humanities (the "two cultures" of the title) was a major hindrance to
solving the world's problems.

This conflict - arts versus sciences - continues to exist, however,
in all highly developed western societies. Despite the indisputable
dominance of the scientific and technological culture in everyday
life and despite its contribution to the welfare of everyone, the
vocal intellectual leaders of public opinion together with the others
in the media, schools and churches, have cast doubt not only on the
consequences of science and technology, but also on the legitimacy of
the scientific world view itself.

How are we to bring the two cultures together. I would suspect that
through a "Green" sensibility, soundly founded upon scientific
ecological principles, we have a chance to satisfy both sides of the
argument - and achieve a way of using both reductionism and wholism
as means of coming at wisdom, doing justic to the creative, artistic
and spiritual aspects of life in a way that avoids the polarities
discussed above.

> Possibly one reason the word 'god' doesn't appear on the Swadesh
> word lists is because of social and political reasons i.e.
> scientists today consider themselves atheists and anyone who is a
> non-atheist is automatically given the label "creationist".
> Creationists are automatically pooh-poohed as non-scientists. Do
> you by chance have access to a World language list that "might"
> include meanings for the term "god"?

Gerry, the Swadesh list, I understand, was of the 100 words most
likely to be found in different languages. I know from the work of
the Summer Institute of Linguistics, that many languages have no word
for God, and considerable work must occur to find a way of creating
an indigenous equivalent. This is certainly the case of the Nyungar
language of the South West of Western Australia, where I live. I
don't think that the lack of a word for God on the Swadesh list has
anything to do with "scientific atheism" or the non-scientific
attitudes of Creationists. I have met many Creationist linguists via
SIL who make use of the Swadesh list to look at differences between
languages.

Hope this helps

Regards

John