We take for granted the inexorable march of scientific inquiry with which we have grown up (my generation and the two before me). There have been in history huge forces which have stifled inquiry. In the sixth century BCE and for some three hundred years after, Greeks developed a mathematics than enabled them to chart…
Tag: Egypt
Marius
In Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables there is an uprising of the young, forming barricades to protest at the state and Marius the young naive stands with his young political friends who all die. These uprising apparently were frequent following the revolution and even today the French are quite happy to march and burn things in…
Goodbye Egypt
Mubarak, whom I suspected might have been complicit in Sadat’s murder, is going, leaving an Egypt longing for democratic policies that don’t include secret police and the de facto rule of the army. I sometimes wonder if people really understand themselves. A long time ago I heard a Buddhist monk say that anyone who converted…
Facebook Revolutions
Let me first say the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt will not change the political map for the better in the Middle East as far as the Western idea of change is concerned. There will be no great democratic whirlwind because the leaders who are falling are old men, their time had come years ago….