Index 
Epistemology Greek Gods
Ananke, Chronos and their children: Neither I nor a dog can bid our hearts to stop or our breath to cease, but I can, and perhaps even a dog can bid myself “not to eat” and die of lack of energy. The brain of a dog uses energy in about the some proportions as mine. Dogs make nests by turning around in high grass, but our nests seem so much more complex. So where lies the difference? ISTMRN the idea of “necessity”, the idea of “cause and effect”, the idea of “logic” to explicate “necessity”, the related idea of “time”, and its relative “the future” made “necessary” by current “causes” may lie at or near the heart of the difference. And ISTRMN the difference lies not in their possession, but in their content. Dogs, it seems, reason quite well to build a nest, to get food and attention, but I suspect they restrict their logic (attention) to extant current conditions and their likely immediate (maybe short-term) consequences. I on the other hand seem able to extend my logic more to the hypothetical (marginal note: careful with “time”including infinite futures). Some, Plato for example, have called this hypothetical “more real” than the current “sensible” conditions (e.g. a Euclid triangle and God). Because we make the hypothetical real, we extend the power of reason, of “if-then” thinking to the imaginary, and “everything” becomes possible. Everything imaginable becomes potentially real or “true”, so long as its chain of cause and effect is linked to the defining IF condition. Is that progressive evolution? Or perhaps deep, deep delusion, perhaps both, or neither. The Greeks called her Anake, necessity, cause leading to effect. She was the most primordial of the gods, along with Chronos, time. Their union gave rise to “Chaos” which we might call “empty” space, and “Gaia”, earth, “substance” which we might call “matter”. Then the titans, then the human-like gods and goddesses we often here about like “love” (Aphrodite), “war” (Ares) his father, power, authority (Zeus), truth and light (Apollo), the rainbow colors (Iris) and many others. However, I build my most sacred temple of thanks to Ananke and Chronos’s other daughters according Hesiod the three Moirai, the Fates: Clotho who gives life; Lachesis who weaves it pattern; and yes, even Atropo of the “dreaded shears” who snips the thread of our life. I try always to thank them whenever I catch a green light when I am late, but am careful not to curse them when I don’t. |