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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "andrew_and_inge"

<100761.200@...>

> wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Exu Yangi" <exuyangi@...>

wrote:

> > > >--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen"

<tgpedersen@...>

> > > >wrote:
> > > >Within the lunar month the moon has four phases, each about a
> > > >week 7 days long. That's sacred for ya.
> > > >
> > > >So perhaps a tendency to become a taboo word. That might
> explain
> > > >the independent Uralic borrowings from different branches of

IE.

> > > >
> > >
> > > Perhaps, although the breaking up into FOUR groups of seven
> seems
> > fairly
> > > arbitrary. Why not 3 groups (new, 1/3, and 2/3), or even just
> two
> > (new/full)
> > > ? The seven day week seem a new thing, although there are
> > evidences of four
> > > day weeks from northern and central Africa. Perhaps not four
> > groups of
> > > seven, but seven groups of four?
> > >
> > > As for being a taboo word, and hence borrowed from elsewhere --

-

> > usually
> > > taboo words find their replacements from within the native
> stock.
> > Withness
> > > Japanese shi (death;four) being replaced from another counting
> > heirarchy.
> >
> > As the ancient semitic culture also spread the idea of a

calendar

> > with 4 weeks per month this seems no problem. Business people

and

> > especially ones who travel, need calendars.
> >
> > Keep in mind that by calling the importance of seven totemistic
> this
> > discussion downplays the fact that ancient people did not
> > distinguish like we do between knowledge one has to have faith

in,

> > and knowledge simply. 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.

...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