Sunday, July 29, 2018

Bruce Bower — Conflict reigns over the history and origins of money

Thousands of years ago, money was a means of debt payment, archaeologists and anthropologists say.
Useful summary of the history.

Science News
Conflict reigns over the history and origins of money
Bruce Bower

16 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“Money” couldn’t logically precede establishment of the Roman pantheon which is the source of the figure of speech.. .

Tom Hickey said...

Ha ha. ROFLMAO.

Matt Franko said...

Go back and get a science degree...

Matt Franko said...

Tom here:

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. - Ludwig Wittgenstein ”

Apply this....

Matt Franko said...

Tom test question for you:

“How does LWs statement here apply in this situation?”

Show your work....

Tom Hickey said...

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. - Ludwig Wittgenstein ”

Explain to us what you think that means, Matt.

Disclosure: I did my Phd dissertation on Wittgenstein, and my director was a physicist turned to philosophy, specializing in logic and philosophy of science.

Matt Franko said...

Hey I asked you first!

If you go back into the archeological record, you won’t see a figure of speech based on the name of a deified female ancestor representing the mint being used...

LWs “means of language” here the ‘means of language’ is the ‘figure of speech’...

Go back and look at what words were used in discussion of these topics, one word in Greek is ‘nomisma’ a derivative of ‘’nomos’meaning law or convention... one of the Greek Philosophers mentions this word and it’s relation to our civil Law and our authority to thus control and regulate this thing , we understood it intelligently and created a SPECIFIC term for it...

Once a figure of speech is introduced to replace this term, ie “money!”, we lose this specific understanding and all of these douchebag shit for brains moron sub human worthless disposable no material value added womanish elitist disruptive suicidal lazy drunk high stoned backward thinking incompetent untrained unqualified idiot SAT 300 in math GITMO candidate Art Degree people are now going all around saying “what is money?!?!” which they are asking what is the SPECIFIC definition of a figure of speech which any competent linguistic scientist will tell you any figure of speech is purposefully NON specific which makes it a figure of speech in the first place....

The whole problem is these Art Degree people...

Matt Franko said...

Lock them all up....

Tom Hickey said...

Matt, the Roman Goddess Moneta was derived from a Greek goddess, Juno Moneta. See Wikipedia, Moneta

In Roman mythology, Moneta (Latin Monēta) was a title given to two separate goddesses: the goddess of memory (identified with the Greek goddess Mnemosyne) and an epithet of Juno, called Juno Moneta (Latin Iūno Monēta). The latter's name is source of numerous words in English and the Romance languages, including the words "money" and "mint".

The use and understanding of money as a creature of the polis was already understood centuries before, e.g. Aristotle, who used the Greek term nomisma , which is derived from Greek nomos, meaning custom or law — as you have pointed out here previously.

The idea that "money" — an English terms by the way — was dependent in any way on a Roman Goddess as a historical phenomena, abstraction, or "figure of speech" is nonsense. That concept had existed long before Latin as the etymological source of the Romance language and related languages like English, which is combination of several sources, Anglo-Saxon prior to the Norman invasion (1066) and then the introduction of Norman French. These eventually melded into Middle English. ( source )

Anonymous said...

In architecture 'form follows function'. So you would ask 'why is $money?' long before you ask 'what is $money?'.

For me, $money is a symbol of energy, concretised in the search for material fulfillment (non-existent by the way)- the fifth use of money that swallows all of the others.

Tom Hickey said...

For me, $money is a symbol of energy, concretised in the search for material fulfillment (non-existent by the way)- the fifth use of money that swallows all of the others.

Agree with both "deeper" meanings of "money" as an abstraction.

I would say that the first is philosophical and the second is spiritual.

But the first is also economic, taking energy in the physical sense, as Chris Cook tirelessly observes.

Tom Hickey said...

BTW, we should talk more about architecture, since it is the confluence of science and art — engineering and design.

The key fundamental of architecture is space and using it.

This involved design, knowledge and skill, and technology.

Its about efficient and effective use of energy, not only physical energy (tension and compression) but psychic energy, which is multi-faceted.

BTW, this was combined in an amazing in the forerunners of modern architecture, the master-builders, before specialization and division of labor separated out different aspects. The work of the master-builders still astounds.

It's not by accident that great architects have been philosophers in the sense of thought leaders and influencers. In the 20th century, Bucky Fuller comes to mind. They were dealing with fundamental problems and designing solutions. Fuller called this "design science."

Tom Hickey said...

I used to talk about these subjects with my architect friend Roy Mason, who was one of the early participants in the World Future Society and a futuristic architect.

We came up with the idea that that form not only follows function, but also that form follows force, not only in the physical sense of force but also in the sense of "The Force" (Tao).

André said...

"'Money' couldn’t logically precede establishment of the Roman pantheon which is the source of the figure of speech.. ."

You know, lions (and similar predators) existed before the human species gave a name to them (eve before language emerged).

The fact that there was no word for it didn't mean that lions weren't there or that people were not aware or afraid of them...

Greg said...

Matt has gone off the deep end

Anonymous said...

Right Tom. Nowadays 'Tao' is called vacuum energy, creating particles in the quantum fields.