[Fis] THE ROOTS OF MODERN CIVILISATION

Thu Jan 12 16:57:22 CET 2023

Dear Plamen, Pedro and FIS Colleagues,
I wish you a Happy and Healthy New Year!
May it bring us PEACE!
The term "civilization" is usually associated with any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely a written system).

This means that it is difficult to determine exactly one root of modern civilization, and it is necessary to dwell on one that is more significant from the point of view of our specialty.

Therefore, I would point out as an important event for the birth of modern civilization - the creation and development of the market of knowledge as part of the more general and inclusive market of information, understanding by "information" both the reflections (data) that INFOS can recognize, as well as the knowledge that INFOS has materialized in the environment as a special class of reflections.

In other words, "information" in the everyday sense is the aggregate of data and knowledge, and the "information market" consists of a data market and a knowledge market.

Since the collection, storage, processing and distribution of data became a business much later than the same activities with knowledge, in my opinion, the emergence of the market of knowledge determines the birth of modern civilization.

If this aspect is interesting to the FIS colleagues, then in the following posts I could present in a little more detail the main characteristics of the knowledge market.

Respectfully yours,
Krassimir

El 06/01/2023 a las 12:49, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov escribió:

  Dear Colleagues,

  I wish you a HAPPY; HEALTHY AND PEACEFUL NEW YEAR 2023 !

  It is my pleasure to announce, -- also on behalf of our generous and hard-working host Pedro C. Marijuan who has provided us with this forum of wonderful exchange for so many years (Hallelujah!), --  the opening of our New Year's discussion session under the topic THE ROOTS OF CIVILISATION. that will end on January 31st, 2023.

  I am eager and curious to read your ideas. Please feel free to share whatever comes to your mind.

  Here is the abstract with the focus and some idea we can extract/expect at the end:

  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  THE ROOTS OF MODERN (WESTERN / EUROPEAN) CIVILISATION

  INTRO: We are living today in uncertain times with multiple overlapping human-made crises which an advanced civilization is supposed to anticipate and prevent -- ecology, epidemics, overpopulation, economy with disproportional energy and resources consume, cultural and generational polarization, even questioning science, moral values and an individual’s identity. Furthermore, ideologically led old ghost teachings of division, conflict and confrontation among social groups and utopic tech visions for remodeling and resetting the world with unpredictable consequences are contributing to the overall confusion and wrong choices, thus deepening the crises even more. Could we look back at the past for some lessons?

  THE MAGISTERY OF HISTORY: There have been many episodes of civilization crises along human history. Each one of them has left a "recipe" in our collective memory of how to overcome it. Maybe this time things have become too complex and multi-faceted, like society itself. Or maybe an evil intention is lurking behind? There are so many different aspects at multiple levels in social life all over the world that have been increasingly challenged by our tunnel vision on technology oriented towards more production/profit and less cleaning/reuse/benevolence, away from a stable equilibrium (“homeostasis”). They need to be reorganized coherently and in a commonly agreeable way, not in one imposed by self-proclaimed authorities who got used to changing long established definitions and rules of conduct following their own agenda. This takes time, of course, as it has always been. What about looking for lessons to learn from the past, or at least to obtain some orientation in order to make the right decisions in this difficult time? This appears to be more reasonable than starting to invent novel directive-guided solutions from scratch deploying not yet proven as safe technologies in a trial-and-error fashion. We have an intriguing proposal for you. Let us focus on a fascinating period in human history and find out how the Western world was rebuilt and reintegrated from the ruins of the Roman Empire.

  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=1708__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QqILwQYVhd6Led741Ct3gE2zPJP81h6L8jowmkcxin4HsPvAaOu-WPDFzr3IS86hhGlc2rO8BF299cxg$ 

  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire-paved-the-road-to-modernity__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QqILwQYVhd6Led741Ct3gE2zPJP81h6L8jowmkcxin4HsPvAaOu-WPDFzr3IS86hhGlc2rO8BA1pt3Jj$ 

  THE MONASTIC SYSTEM - A GREAT IDEA. A handful of people may be credited with the design and realization of this truly civilization project. During its golden ages, Rome was defended by more than 200,000 legionaries, but after its fall in 466 AD they were replaced by other, more powerful spiritual warriors. They gradually covered the fragmented (Western) Europe and expanded Christianity through missionaries in the North by a coherent space of several thousand Catholic Benedictine monasteries that peacefully preserved and cultivated education, technology, economy, medicine, law, art and moral values that integrated the wisdom of the classical antiquity (Rom and Greece) and enlightened the local communities through the Dark Ages. Their success in ameliorating and guiding the human spirit paved the way for the urban "cloisters" of universities during the Renaissance Era (XII century ff.) where the seeds of science found their fruitful grounds to grow. Thus, several major crises, incl. alien invasions, the plague, internecine wars and famines were overcome thanks to this new resilient social scaffold.

  In Eastern Europe, the Roman-Byzantine Empire in Constantinople, although shrunk through the waves of plague and foreign invasions, survived for almost 1000 years thanks to expanding Christianity and culture to its new neighbor and rival, but also ally at times in the North, the Bulgarian Empire. The latter developed the Cyrillic alphabet during the IX century AD, translated the holy books/prayers/songs in their language and began disseminating them to the other Slavic people in today’s territories of Serbia and Montenegro, Wallachia (Romania), Ukraine and Russia. When the Bulgarian 3 kingdoms and Constantinople surrendered in 1396 AD and 1453 AD to the Ottoman Empire, the conquered people on the Balkan peninsula continued to exist spiritually through a growing network of Christian Orthodox monasteries that kept the local communities together and finally led them to freedom through the national liberation movements in the XIX century.

  Both Eastern and Western Europe endured those crises, calamities and invasions because they maintained firm, sound civilization roots based on the monastic system, the universities and schools as education centers, and later on industrial corporations. From today’s viewpoint the monastic system is analogous to a modern resilient, redundant, fault-tolerant and flexibly configurable computer network, particularly with respect to its data storage and processing resources, capable of self-diagnosis and self-healing, a critical infrastructure per se. If a monastery was destroyed or burned, the monks escaped with most of their valuable books and artefacts via safe routes to neighboring monasteries, where they could be preserved, replicated and distributed again.

  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QqILwQYVhd6Led741Ct3gE2zPJP81h6L8jowmkcxin4HsPvAaOu-WPDFzr3IS86hhGlc2rO8BJdZd7a7$ 

  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.thebyzantinelegacy.com/boyana-church__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QqILwQYVhd6Led741Ct3gE2zPJP81h6L8jowmkcxin4HsPvAaOu-WPDFzr3IS86hhGlc2rO8BN5Gfsj7$ 

  THE SUCCESS OF THE WESTERN WORLD: Arguably, what we call cultural Renaissance followed by scientific and industrial revolutions were an evolutive product of medieval society and the era of great geographical discoveries in the New Worlds beyond Europe, North Africa and Asia. Quite probably, they were only possible thanks to the first missionary globalization and peaceful goods exchange along the silk trade route following the pattern of the Antique World trade across the territories surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Spain and Portugal brought to Europe not only spices and silk, but also fundamental technologies from Asia (gun powder, magnetic compass, paper, porcelain), and later on a regular maritime trade routes from China via Philippines and Mexico over the Atlantic that were active for more than 250 years before Holland, France and England became colonial powers dominating the sea trade, yet at the price of slavery and exploiting the native population. The further role of science and technology in the task of changing Western societies was awesome, perhaps with the infamous Cartesian breach between science and the humanities, which no doubt has delivered a biased conception of our rationality limits and led to awful ideological misunderstandings that are absent in oriental civilizations.

  BACK TO THE PROBLEMS OF OUR TIME

  And here we are. In a world that again faces illnesses and adverse events from their anecdotic treatment to ask: “How is the state of our civilization and our roots today? What do we identify with today? Do we recognize the patterns that let us down before and now? Do we know what can reconcile and heal our multi-facetted society?”

  We modestly, as scientists recognizing the societal immune system, acknowledge the fact that we have the duty to contribute to recovering the system with coherent visions illuminating the "forking paths ahead" (as Borges put it). First of all, on our own turf -- the flagrant incoherence and misunderstandings around most fields where information and communication, meaning and knowledge, as well as collective intelligence need to be cleared up and nailed down. We need to clean up our own backyard on this planet and evolve to a new level, -- not necessarily a purely technocratic one, -- before we set off for new missions in space and meeting other civilizations out there.

  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://interestingliterature.com/2021/07/jorge-luis-borges-the-garden-of-forking-paths-summary-analysis/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QqILwQYVhd6Led741Ct3gE2zPJP81h6L8jowmkcxin4HsPvAaOu-WPDFzr3IS86hhGlc2rO8BCVpUUnZ$ 

  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/william-shatner-space-boldly-go-excerpt-1235395113/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QqILwQYVhd6Led741Ct3gE2zPJP81h6L8jowmkcxin4HsPvAaOu-WPDFzr3IS86hhGlc2rO8BH_FO-Pg$ 

  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  With best wishes,

  Plamen

  ___ ___ ___

  Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov

  Director Research Integral Biomathics

  InBioCe – Integral Biomathics Centre

  phone1: +1 (213) 822-7245

  phone2: +49 173 7816 337

  email: plamen at simeio.org

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  simeio.org  | ibiomath.org  |  inbiosa.eu

  OurWorldInData.org/coronavirus

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  Orcid ID: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2672-4405__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QqILwQYVhd6Led741Ct3gE2zPJP81h6L8jowmkcxin4HsPvAaOu-WPDFzr3IS86hhGlc2rO8BMHryiFy$ 

  Scopus Author ID: 7006001629

  ResearcherID: T-4786-2017

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