re 'Yeomen' -- Eric and James
2nd take Yeomen, as I understand the term, are a group of people having enough material and educational resources to be 'free thinkers'. The question is: Are these people decisive wrt the advancement of humanity? I think not. They play a certain role, but not more. In the early middle ages it was the church-builders, which advanced the art of empirical construction of large buildings by trial and error. Lots of churches had to be repaired or collapsed altogether. Those 'geniuses' are not known by name but their deeds and their various inventions like the rope-triangle with three knots, one of the most impressive inventions ever in the construction of gothic churches. Plus the proper identification of construction materials. Those were definitely not 'Yeomen'. The creative drives of the churchbuilders were directed by -- the dominant belief -- a drive by the dominant religious elite to fortify power, by summoning all the creative forces of their time in their interest. Simple. Right? Machiavellian strategy, which creative people seem to easily fall prey to. The main driver was societal surplus, which enabled the inventive minds to do their work. This goes back to Stonehenge. Unknown geniuses. The ‘Yeomen’ played their limited role in early modernism, but not a dominant one. It is just that they had a certain amount of leisure, which other classes (sorry) did not have. Two examples to the contrary of the 'Yeomen' view: a) Paracelsus: The founder of modern medicine, was mainly self-educated, and his main trait was a fierce empiricism combined with a humanist impulse: to effectively heal. b) Leonardo: Apart from his genius, one has to mention, that his mother was a slave, married to an establishment figure, a notary. Leonardo prostituted himself to the elite, by devising various advanced weapon-devices. The leisure class, as Thorstein Veblen termed it, actually advanced the fashion of being empirical, and enjoyed the downfall of the noble class, which had nothing substantial to object on this in the 17th/18th century, which culminated in the enlightenment. The noble classes participated in this downfall, by some defaetist insight, that they lost the game, and another one would be established soon: Approx 1780 to 1830. In this timespan the middle nobility aligned with the ascending bourgeois in advancing science and empiricism, the middle nobility gradually accepting defeat. Lavoisier being one prominent example, as said. ...Lavoisier was tried, convicted, and guillotined on 8 May 1794 in Paris, at the age of 50. … (by indictment of Robespierre). Dangerous times. Read Yourself about the background. Sorry to depart from the main thrust of the list by narrating that. But there are some connections, which I consider important, and should not be misinterpreted. To consider LENR as a straightforward cure to all our illnesses seems to me fundamentally misdirected. My practical other ID explores the issue, but is hopefully controlled by my other ID, say Kahneman’s ‘slow thinking’. Guenther
