THINKERS AND ACTORS

SUMMARY

Thinkers and Actors is a thesis about the influence of individuals on human history. It identifies the nature of influence but does not assert that human influence is dominant or otherwise relative to nature and randomness. It is meant to free the academic and the intellectual - the writers of history and history of ideas - from their self-assigned place in the stream. Thinkers are more important to action than may have been imagined but actors are similarly influential upon the history of thought

The synthesis of thought and action is essential to my theory of being and of thought. Relative to thought I am not making the obvious claim that there is a responsibility to translate ideas into action and to learn from the world. I claim that, without action, there is and can be no thought; and that without thought there is mere process but no action. Action and thought are not independent kinds but, in being, are bound into a unified kind

CONTENTS

THINKERS AND ACTORS 1

1 Concept 1

2 Criteria for selection 1

3 Themes and Outline of Periods 1

3.1 Themes 1

3.2 0utline according to period, place and emphasis 1

IMPLEMENTATION 2

1 First focus Philosophy 2

2 Second focus 2

2.1 Main Players for Study and Reference 2

2.2 The Thinkers and Actors 3

2.3 The Transformation of Vision and Being 4

3 Plan 4

3.1 Sources 4

Latest Revision and Copyright 4

THINKERS AND ACTORS

1 Concept

Ideas and action are, in the present concept, the prime sources of influence. Key –seminal– thinkers and actors have significant effect on human thought and being. Understanding their contribution and its means is one important way to know and realize what is possible in thought and being. The views and acts of any one individual or group is a facet, an approach to thought and being. The primary concern is always what can be learnt and incorporated in [individual] Journeys in thought and being and – if at all – only secondarily one of “evaluation” of the views and acts. Evaluations will be for estimates of the place of the thinker or actor in the story of [human] being; schemes of evaluation – psychoanalytic, religious and so on – may be used but primarily toward the objectives just stated. This implies an evaluation – if an implicit one – of the schemes of evaluation

The focus is the individual in relation to the group. It is not implied that “key” individuals are more important than others. Rather, through the record of history certain individuals and acts stand at the focal points of change and transformation of the human tradition. True, history includes bias and storytelling; truth is important but we shall not allow our limitations – contingent or necessary – to prevent us from creating our own world. The historical material shall be viewed as an instrument. Individuals are the source of choice and innovation. Is there choice and innovation – or is each individual the sum of his or her experience? That is not a contradiction for experience includes the learning of the capacity of choice and how to choose. It is not implied that choice is fully conscious in all its phases or that an individual may choose to do or be anything. Rather, there is an interaction between experience, learning, cultivation and exercise of the capability for choice

2 Criteria for selection

Focal significance and influence for being and thought and contribution to actual knowledge and being and their possibilities and potential – universal and personal [my own] in relation to the universal

3 Themes and Outline of Periods

The origin of Thinkers and Actors is a second bibliography to Evolution and Design. “This bibliography and source reference is a balance to the system of Bibliography I - per topic. Source materials are collected and will be compiled per occasion. I.e. the fate of this bibliography is contingent upon opportunity and necessity.” Presently, Thinkers and Actors is one approach to a concept of and organization for the ideas of Being and the Elements of Being

3.1 Themes

Individuals – Power – Knowledge

Imagery and art

Symbols, language and understanding

Religion and science

Charisma and influence – and institutions and organization

Tools, technology and agriculture

Exploration

Trade and exchange

Tradition, learning and sharing

3.2 0utline according to period, place and emphasis

Time of Myth: dawn of Man to 700 BC	Origin of language and words – Mythic Hero
Time of Philosophy: 700 BC to 300 AD	Religious Thinkers – Philosophers
Time of Imagination – Power, Adventure, Chaos:	Scholastic: Arabic, Christian 300 AD to 1500 AD
Time of Explorers: dawn to 2100… exploration and knowledge	Explorers
Time of Knowledge: 1500 to the present	Symbolic Analysis and Systems
Natural and Social Sciences
Divisions of the World	Asia – Europe – Americas – Australasia – Africa

IMPLEMENTATION

1 First focus Philosophy

Philosophers – first listing in the areas of being, knowing, mind, language, the absolute, evolution, design, machines, society, and nature

Western Philosophers. Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Nicholas of Cusa, Bruno, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Charles Babbage, Kierkegaard, Herbert Spencer, Marx, Brentano, Peirce, Frege, Nietzsche, James, Durkheim, Peano, Husserl, Russell, Dewey, Freud, Henri Bergson, Samuel Alexander, C. Lloyd Morgan, Wittgenstein, Broad, Heidegger, Whitehead, Karl Popper, Turing, Sartre, Ryle, Michael Polanyi

Some publications. This list is not comprehensive but emphasizes my interests. For now – two examples. Frege: Begriffsschrift [1879, Conceptual Notation”], Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik [1884, The Foundations of Arithmetic], Grundgesetze der Arithmetik [1893, Basic Laws of Arithmetic]. In Grundgesetze, Frege presented, in a modified version of the symbolic system of the Begriffsschrift, a rigorous development of the theory of Grundlagen. It was the second volume of Grundgesetze [1903] in which, in an appendix, that Frege published his response to Russell’s paradox. Frege was largely responsible for the development of symbolic logic including the use of variables and quantifiers, the main advance in logic since Aristotle, in the 19^th century and for logicism, the thesis that mathematics is a “chapter” of logic. These themes were taken up by Russell: The Principles of Mathematics [1903], Principia Mathematica [1910, 1912, and 1913]; and two publications on knowledge – An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940] and Russell’s final major work Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits [1948]

Indian philosophy and philosophers. The following is a tentative list. Pre-1947 Most of the following group were idealist metaphysicians i.e., they believed that reality is spiritual: Aurobindo Ghosh “Sri Aurobindo” 1872 – 1950 a modern Vedantic philosopher, K.C. Bhattacharya, Rabindranath Tagore, M.K. Gandhi, S. Radhakrishnan, B. Seal, H. Haldar, R.D. Ranade, D.M. Datta, N.V. Bannerjee, R. Das, A.C. Mukherji; N.V. Bannerjee, and R Das, in contrast, were influenced by Hegel and Sankara. Post 1947 The following two groups are influenced by analytic philosophy, modern logic, phenomenology and/or Navya-Nyâya –– the logical-epistemological school of Indian Philosophy: P.J. Chaudhury, K.D. Bhattacharya, A.S. Ayub; and a younger group: M. Chatterjee, N.K. Devaraja, Daya Krishna, Bimal Matilal, J.N. Mohanty, Rajendra Prasad, P.K. Sen. Non-Indians practicing modes of Indian Philosophy: Daniel Ingalls, Eric Fraunwallner, Eliot Deutsch, Karl Potter

Asian philosophers. Feng Youlan – Chinese, Mao Zedong – Chinese, Kitaro Nishida – Japanese, Keiji Nishitani – Japanese, Zhan Binglin – Chinese

2 Second focus

This phase is experimental in its development. The idea is that it is mistake to focus on only one of action and intellect, one of persons and events

2.1 Main Players for Study and Reference

I aim at

Integrating: actors with thinkers; religion, natural and general philosophy; the prehistory to civilization of action and thought

In selectivity; in substituting schools for individuals when that would provide the best representation in a synoptic vision

A braid of developments [data] that is sufficient to found the synoptic vision or theory. Of course my vision also influences my choices for entries. The interactive logic that results is, however, developmental rather than viciously circular. These choices are also limited by time constraints. Thus the restriction to shamanism under pre-historic religion; I recognize that there is a Shamanic fad but a reason for that is the extensive and serious literature on it. Regarding historical development I would like to include all continents but have currently, based in time and my personal experience, made restriction to Europe and India

In that – in combination with the history of evolution: see Evolution and Design – this document is a synthesis of entire [human] development in which no individual element [thumbs, brains, bipedalism, morality…] or phase [knowledge, technology, action…] is seen as pivotal. Rather, the details are synthetically integrated within an organism-environment history

2.2 The Thinkers and Actors

The times and time scales are different for each column

Actors and action	Religion	Western philosophy		Natural philosophy	Political-economic
4M [million years] BC: Hominids –– 1.75M: Stone tools –– 200K: Fire –– 100K: Homo S. [burial of the dead] –– 40K Modern Man –– 10K: Animal Husbandry –-	Shamanism –– Buddha –– Christ	Primary	Philosophy from the time of Kant ... is indicated below by the schools. This is not a statement of relative importance of individuals	Archimedes –– Galileo –– Newton –– Darwin –– Gauss –– Maxwell –– Freud –– Poincare –– Einstein –– Dirac	Plato –– Hobbes –– Locke –– Paine –– Adam Smith –– David Ricardo –– Marx –– Bakunin –– Keynes –– Galbraith –– Friedman
10K to Christ End of last ice age –– obsidian tools –– domestication of cattle –– pottery, weaving –– copper –– writing –-wheel –– Ur Namu, earliest law book –– empire –– war –– religion –– iron –– Assyrian Temple to Enlil –– silver coin –– Gautama, Mahavira, Ashoka –-Alexander, Caesar –– Christ	Indian philosophy Veda –– Upanisad –– Gita –– Samkhya/Yoga –– Vedanta –– Sri Aurobindo –– Radhakrishnan	Greece: Parmenides –– Plato –– Aristotle –– Plotinus Europe: Bruno –– Locke –– Hume –– Kant –– Hegel –– Schopenhauer –- Nietzsche	Kantian –– Hegelian –– Realism –– Process –– Evolutionary –– Pragmatism –– Logical Positivism –– Linguistic Philosophy –– Philosophy of Mind –– Phenomenology and Existentialism –– Post Modern America
Other Ancient Genghis Khan –– Chandra Gupta I –– Samudra Gupta –– Chandra Gupta II		Secondary – for my current objectives of learning			Education Rousseau –– Froebel –– Piaget
		Europe: Aquinas –– Descartes –– Leibniz –– Spinoza –– Berkeley