Hello. I'm Radox.
i just dropped in from the Chrono Crisis forums, having just made a pretty decent find. I was convinced to post it here. Just some stuff you may wish to concider... this is my whole post as quoted from the Chrono Crisis forums:
Start Quote was surfing the internet between the waves of philosophy and psychology (It's what I do.) When I came across a certain interesting concept related to Nu's. I know the Compendium looked into them on one article but i'm not sure whether or not they came across this. So I ran across to wikipedia to get some info...
I'll
boldify thos parts which really piqued my interest. Keep in mind that these are select quotes. These are neither a whole nor from the same article.
In Greek, “first principles” are arkhai, starting points, and thr origin of the physical world and the faculty used to perceive them is sometimes referred to in Aristotle and Plato as “nous” which was
close in meaning to “awareness” and therefore “consciousness”. This leaves open the question of whether
we become aware by building up and comparing experiences, (Entity anybody?) or some other way.
Nous is a Greek word (pronounced "noose"), that corresponds
to the English words
intelligence, intellect, intuition or mind. It signifies a search for order by the part of the soul or mind that knows and thinks. In some forms of Greek mythology, order was imposed by an
anthropomorphic father of all things, the Demiurge.(God.)
In philosophy, there were three ordering principles:
1. arche - the source of all things,
The idea of an arche was first philosophized by Thales of Miletus, who claimed that the
first principle of all things is water(See bottom*). His theory was supported by the observation of moisture throughout the world and coincided with his theory that the earth floated on water.
Thales' theory was refuted by his successor and estimated pupil, Anaximander. Anaximander noted that water could not be the arche because it could not give rise to its opposite, fire. Anaximander claimed that none of the elements (earth, fire, air, water) could be arche for the same reason. Instead, he proposed the existence of the apeiron, an indefinite substance from
which all things are born and to which all things will return.Anaximenes, Anaximander's pupil, advanced yet another theory. He returns to the elemental theory, but this time posits air, rather than water, as the arche. Anaximenes suggests that all is made from air through either rarefication or condensation (thinning or thickening).
Rarefied, air becomes fire; condensed, it becomes first wind, then cloud, water, earth, and stone in order. (Remember the books at Zeal?)2. logos - the underlying order that is hidden beneath appearances.
It is often translated into English as "Word" but can also mean thought, speech,
meaning, reason, proportion, principle, standard, or logic, among other things.
By the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, logos was the term used to describe the faculty of human
reason and the knowledge (Fitting for the Guru of Reason)men had of the world and of each other. Plato allowed his characters to engage in the conceit of describing logos as a living being in some of his dialogues. The development of the Academy with hypomnemata brought logos closer to the literal text. Aristotle, who studied under Plato, first developed the concept of logic as a depiction of the rules of human rationality.
3. harmonia - numerical ratios in mathematics.
Harmonia is the
natural state of being of all creatures asserted by Plato
The word Nous signifies more than one concept. It is therefore ambiguous. This is a result of the word being appropriated by successive philosophers to designate very different attributes.
Homer used Nous to signify mental activities in general.
Anaxagoras's Nous was a
mechanical ordering force that formed the world out of an original chaos. It began the development of the cosmos.
Plato
described it as the immortal, rational part of the soul. This section of the soul of the world is the component that brings reasoned order to the universe. It is a godlike kind of thinking in which the truths of conclusions are immediately known without having to understand the preliminary premises.
Aristotle asserted that
Nous was the intellect, as distinguished from sense perception. He divided it into an active and passive Nous. The passive is affected by knowledge. The active is an immortal first cause of all subsequent causes in the world. To the Stoics, it was the same as Logos. This is the whole cosmic reason.
It contains human reason as a part. (Belthasar sure liked his Nu's.)Plotinus described Nous as one of the emanations from divine being. (Entity?) Radox: So whatdya think? Should I (finally) get an account at the compendium and see what they think?
*= this is an edit. Just in case poeple don't know, it's been theorized that the name 'Nu' represents the egyptian letter V which was closely related to water. At the conpendium, they theorise that Belthasar's quote is theorised to mean: 'All life begins with water and ends with water....'
end quoteI hope you Compendium dudes find this information useful if you didn't know it already.
