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The Enlightenment

Towards the end of the 17th century the world beyond Ireland was changing. Science led the way to the Enlightenment a movement that in England is normally said to have begun with the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1686) and John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding(1689). In France Descartes presaged Voltaire. In Scotland David Hume and Adam Smith revolutionised thinking and in America Thomas Jefferson proposed political reform that provided a rationale, beyond a naked grab for wealth and Indian land snatch by a new elite, to the American Revolution (1775-83). 

 

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David Hume and Adam Smith in Edinburgh
(David a bit chilly in winter)

 

Soon the stability of the old orders in Europe was shaken to its foundations by the Revolution in France (1789). 

Thus the Enlightenment had come to Europe and with it a new religious scepticism and a rejection of religious extremism.  Catholic emancipation began in Ireland and Britain with the 'Papists Act' of 1778, following similar reform in Quebec in Canada in 1774.  Protestant extremists were appalled and protested, with riots in Scotland, but by 1793 Roman Catholics had been allowed to establish schools, attend university and, if a male land owner, to vote just like their Protestant neighbours. Thus by the time Australia was colonised by Britain in 1788 there was no legal discrimination on the grounds of religion. And in due course freedom from religious test became enshrined in the Australian Constitution in 1901.

During the 17th century the population of Ireland had been less than three million but with improved transportation, in the age of Empires, grain and fibre production was increasingly profitable. Yet agriculture was still manual and across the world land owners needed more labour.  In the Americas this back breaking labour would be provided by slaves.  In Russia and Ireland, land owners required their agricultural workers to reproduce. This required that they be fed, cutting into profits. 

Then, in the mid-18th century, fortune, like manner from heaven, fell upon the landowners.  A new food plant had been discovered in South America.  It had already been cultivated and improved by the Inca in the Andes of South America over hundreds of years. And it turned out to be ideal for feeding Europe's agricultural workers - it was the potato.  In less than fifty years, with the help of the potato and the Catholic Church's hunger for new souls, Ireland's peasant and predominantly Catholic population had tripled to nearly nine million and was still growing exponentially, providing plentiful cheap labour for the landowners and blossoming congregations for the Roman Catholic Church. A win-win for all concerned.

 

 

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Travel

Egypt, Syria and Jordan

 

 

 

In October 2010 we travelled to three countries in the Middle East: Egypt; Syria and Jordan. While in Egypt we took a Nile cruise, effectively an organised tour package complete with guide, but otherwise we travelled independently: by cab; rental car (in Jordan); bus; train and plane.

On the way there we had stopovers in London and Budapest to visit friends.

The impact on me was to reassert the depth, complexity and colour of this seminal part of our history and civilisation. In particular this is the cauldron in which Judaism, Christianity and Islam were created, together with much of our science, language and mathematics.

Read more: Egypt, Syria and Jordan

Fiction, Recollections & News

Memory

 

 

 

Our memories are fundamental to who we are. All our knowledge and all our skills and other abilities reside in memory. As a consequence so do all our: beliefs; tastes; loves; hates; hopes; and fears.

Yet our memories are neither permanent nor unchangeable and this has many consequences.  Not the least of these is the bearing memory has on our truthfulness.

According to the Macquarie Dictionary a lie is: "a false statement made with intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood - something intended or serving to convey a false impression".  So when we remember something that didn't happen, perhaps from a dream or a suggestion made by someone else, or we forget something that did happen, we are not lying when we falsely assert that it happened or truthfully deny it.

The alarming thing is that this may happen quite frequently without our noticing. Mostly this is trivial but when it contradicts someone else's recollections, in a way that has serious legal or social implications, it can change lives or become front page news.

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Opinions and Philosophy

Luther - Father of the Modern World?

 

 

 

 

To celebrate or perhaps just to mark 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has been running a number of programs discussing the legacy of this complex man featuring leading thinkers and historians in the field. 

Much of the ABC debate has centred on Luther's impact on the modern world.  Was he responsible for today? Without him, might the world still be stuck in the 'Middle Ages' with each generation doing more or less what the previous one did, largely within the same medieval social structures?  In that case could those inhabitants of an alternative 21st century, obviously not us, as we would never have been born, still live in a world of less than a billion people, most of them working the land as their great grandparents had done, protected and governed by an hereditary aristocracy, their mundane lives punctuated only by variations in the weather; holy days; and occasional wars between those princes?

Read more: Luther - Father of the Modern World?

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