They are doing it still

 

 

Arrian

It’s fascinating how common it is to find hints of modern thinking in ancient writings. The example below comes from Arrian of Nicomedia and his Discourses of Epictetus which were Arrian’s notes on lectures given by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.

For how do we proceed in the matter of writing? Do I wish to write the name of Dion as I choose? No, but I am taught to choose to write it as it ought to be written. And how with respect to music? In the same manner. And what universally in every art or science? Just the same. If it were not so, it would be of no value to know anything, if knowledge were adapted to every man’s whim. Is it then in this alone, in this which is the greatest and the chief thing, I mean freedom, that I am permitted to will inconsiderately? By no means; but to be instructed is this, to learn to wish that every thing may happen as it does. And how do things happen? As the disposer has disposed them? And he has appointed summer and winter, and abundance and scarcity, and virtue and vice, and all such opposites for the harmony of the whole; and to each of us he has given a body, and parts of the body, and possessions, and companions.

Arrian of Nicomedia - Discourses of Epictetus (c 108 AD)


There are hints of behavioural psychology in there –

Do I wish to write the name of Dion as I choose? No, but I am taught to choose to write it as it ought to be written. And how with respect to music? In the same manner.

Centuries go by and we forget so many ideas offering worthwhile development. Again and again we sink back into dogma, lies and futile ideologies spun by the rich and powerful and their academic stooges, endlessly reinventing the conceptual wheel in case we catch on.

They are doing it still.