Quote:
Originally Posted by troutman
Scientists have made great leaps in our understanding of the universe in only the last 100 years or so.
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I completely disagree.
I used to be a huge reductionist with a primarily liberal understanding of human nature. Hobbes' Leviathan and Dawkins' Selfish Gene were my two texts of choice.
Then I began getting more back into the classical stuff I enjoyed earlier in academics, along with some of the more skeptical critics of modernity. I was reading Plato's Symposium one night, his great work on human love, and one of the dialogue's characters, can't remember who, says something along the lines of human beings seek immortality through their children.
Socrates dismisses this point, insisting that there must be more to human existence than this animal behaviour. The entire purpose of Dawkins' career was summed up and dismissed in less than a paragraph by Plato.
I was completely blown away after reading this dialogue. My entire worldview was shattered. Moderns don't know poop. Sure the technology and medicine is great, but we know a lot less about ourselves then we think we do.