Friday, June 23, 2006

ITALY, the Centre of Hellenic Thought, Not Greece !

The ANNOTICO Report

 

This all started when I read today about a huge underwater volcano named "Empedocles" ( after the philosopher who hypothesised that all matter consisted of four elements - earth, air, fire and water), that was FOUND 25 miles off the southern coast of Sicily.

 

Actually this was Not the discovery of a NEW Volcano, But the Realization that a SERIES of Volcanoes were actually peaks of ONE Massive Volcano covering 500 sq miles, and they go on to mention that this one peak had actually at one time been an island,  that was now submerged, 20 feet below the surface, and had been the subject of jurisdictional disputes, with I believe England (They just can't let go of that colonialist tendency:)

 

But Empedocles, while of Doric origin, he was called Empedocles the Sicilian. Empedocles was also a mystic and a poet, and some consider him the inventor of the study of  rhetoric. 

 

Below find in the History of Science the recognition that Italy was the Cauldron of what is ascribed as Hellenic thought, which was not possible on the stratified, stultified, suffocating Greek mainland, and had actually first started and prospered in Asia Minor, more specifically the west coast of Turkey, and mainland Greece was the least influential.

 

Further down is the article re  Empedocles, the Volcano.

 

 

In Italy-- the name of  Pythagoras is high on the list of the fathers of Grecian thought. In Italy? Yes, in the western limits of the Greek world. Here it was, beyond the confines of actual Greek territory, that Hellenic thought found its second home, its first home being, as we have seen, in Asia Minor. Pythagoras, indeed, to whom we have just been introduced, was born on the island of Samos, which lies near the coast of Asia Minor, but he probably migrated at an early day to Crotona, in Italy. There he lived, taught, and developed his philosophy until rather late in life, when, having incurred the displeasure of his fellow-citizens, he suffered the not unusual penalty of banishment.

Of the three other great Italic leaders of thought of the early period, Xenophanes came rather late in life to Elea and founded the famous Eleatic School, of which Parmenides became the most distinguished ornament.  Empedocles, the Sicilian,  lived about the middle of the fifth century B.C., at a time, therefore, when Athens had attained a position of chief glory among the Greek states; but there is no evidence that Empedocles ever visited that city, though it was rumored that he returned to the Peloponnesus to die. The other great Italic philosophers just named, living, as we have seen, in the previous century, can scarcely have thought of Athens as a centre of Greek thought.

Indeed, the very fact that these men lived in Italy made that peninsula, rather than the mother-land of Greece, the centre of Hellenic influence. But all these men, it must constantly be borne in mind, were Greeks by language, Yet the fact that they lived in a land which was at no time a part of the geographical territory of Greece must not be forgotten... 

 In general, colonists from the different parts of Greece localized themselves somewhat definitely in their new homes; yet there must naturally have been a good deal of commingling among the various families of pioneers, and, to a certain extent, a mingling also with the earlier inhabitants of the country. This racial mingling, combined with the well-known vitalizing influence of the pioneer life, led, we may suppose, to a more rapid and more varied development than occurred among the home-staying Greeks. In proof of this, witness the remarkable schools of philosophy which, as we have seen, were thus developed at the confines of the Greek world, and which were presently to invade and, as it were, take by storm the mother-country itself...

The List of Other Great Thinkers of Magna Grecia (Southern Italy and Sicily) is somewhat overwhelming, and often difficult to determine, because while they are often listed as Greek, only until one researches their background more diligently does one discover where they were born, studied, and taught, does one realize their influence was Italic.

Pherecydes of Syros  was thought to be the teacher of Pythagoros. Theano was one of the few women in ancient mathematics, was first a student of Pythaoros, later his wife, and was responsible for the concepts of the golden mean, the golden ratio, and golden rectangle.  Leucippus inventor of Atomism. Gorgias of , introduced rhetoric to Greece.  Archytas, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, commander -in -chief born in Tarentum, famous as the intimate friend of Plato

 

UNDERWATER VOLCANO FOUND BY ITALY

 

Italian scientists have identified a huge underwater volcano 40km (25 miles) off the southern coast of Sicily.

 

BBC News

Friday, 23 June 2006

The base of the volcano - named after the Greek philosopher Empedocles - covers an area larger than Rome.

The volcano is higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris, with one peak just seven metres below the sea's surface.

Empedocles is dormant and shows no sign of imminent eruption. Mount Etna, Europe's largest active volcano, lies 100km (60 miles) to its north.

The structure - which incorporates peaks previously thought to be separate volcanoes - has a base that measures 750 square km and stands 400m (1,300ft) high.

At various times in history, Empedocles has formed a small island. The first recorded eruptions occurred in the third century BC and the last in 1831.

Its emergence then put it at the centre of an international row over to whom the volcano actually belonged.

New survey equipment was used to confirm that what used to be considered a series of small underwater fissures are in fact part of a single massive volcano.

"People used to think that there were small centres of emission, distant from each other," Cesare Corselli, president of the National Inter-University Consortium for Marine Science, was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

"The hypothesis... is that this is a singular volcano that, alongside Etna as an example, can have a central eruption or a series of lateral eruptions," he said.

The volcano was named Empedocles after the philosopher who hypothesised that all matter consisted of four elements - earth, air, fire and water.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5108360.stm

 

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