[PEN-L:11364] Re: NC economics

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would like to recommend a wonderful article that compares mastery of
the techniques with the early theologians learning Latin.  Here is the
source and a sample quotation:

McGoun, Elton G. 1995. "Machomatics in Egonomics." International Review
of Financial Analysis, 4: 2/3, pp. 185-199.

185: "It has been suggested that Learned Latin effects even greater
objectivity by establishing knowledge in a medium insulated from the
emotion-charged depths of one's mother tongue, thus reducing
interference from the human lifeworld and making possible the
exquisitely, abstract world of medieval scholasticism .... and of the
new mathematical modern science which followed the scholastic
experience.  Without Learned Latin, it appears that modern science would
have got underway with greater difficulty, if it had got underway at
all.  Modern science grew in Latin soil, for philosophers and scientists
through the time of Sir Isaac Newton commonly both wrote and did their
abstract thinking in Latin." Ong, W.J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The
Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen): p. 114.

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 916-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx