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| 1541644506
| 9781541644502
| 1541644506
| 3.85
| 2,529
| Aug 25, 2020
| Aug 25, 2020
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really liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 10, 2022
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Nov 15, 2022
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Nov 15, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 0525559884
| 9780525559887
| 0525559884
| 4.34
| 2,291
| Sep 05, 2018
| Jan 28, 2020
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really liked it
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This book might proves one of Kant's central tenets of transcendental idealism: that man are not brute machines of sensory, but it also requires a pri
This book might proves one of Kant's central tenets of transcendental idealism: that man are not brute machines of sensory, but it also requires a priori hypothesis, assumptions for man to derive a complete picture of representation of the world. I have always believe that the answer does not lies in the extremities of two opposing poles, but a synthesis between the two. Man are not mere blank slates; we are born with contexts. Millions of years of information has been inherited to us in the form of our genome, but this does not suffice as we have to adapt immediately to our surrounding environment. And it certainly be detrimental to our species to wait for the genome to catch up and adapt to our environment, just as hundreds of generation living in temperate climates to produce fairer skin and blue eyes; we have to immediately respond to immediate factors with a cheatcode: learning. Learning allows us to immediately responds to the environment, save it internally and also propagate it socially. In this book, multiple experiments has shown that children actually are budding scientists; they were born innately with sets of assumptions and hypothesis that allows them a basic understanding of the world. Experiments showed that babies showed surprise when we presented to them occurrences that violates the basic laws of physics (such as impenetrability and solidity of objects), and they also have shown some basic notion of morality (non-maleficence principle, for an example. Babies prefer to choose a doll which in a play, the doll were helpful to other dolls instead of hurting them). Babies are not mere blank slates. As children are readily equipped with underlying hypothesis and also brain plasticity to further facilitate learning, it is important for us to delineate principles that would not impede their processes. These are called by the author as the four pillars of learning. 1. Attention. A simple experiment shows that a child can readily learn a random word by us directly pronouncing it and pointing towards it (thus directing their attention), while a loudspeaker in the background teaching the word, on the other hand, does not help them to learn the word. Attention allows us to amplify the information and speedily encodes it to long-term memory. 2. Active engagement. Active engagement, by applauding curiosity (and directing them) allows children to home into the bits of information that they should learn. 3. Error feedback. Error does not impede learning in anyway. We literally learn from mistakes, as shown by experiments that surprise helps to encode information better. A dog that learns to associate light shone to them with food, does not salivate when another attempt to associate with bell and food. They have lost the sense of surprise they felt in the first instance. And so, good teaching environment that complements error well will actually help the child learn. 4. Consolidation. It's the classic Ebbinghaus forgetting curve; information decay over time. But information retention would greatly improved with few of tried and proven methods: constant revising and yes, a good sleep. This book does really well to shine a light on how we think and learn, and how to apply it to our children. It really helps to shift our perspectives from getting puzzled (or even annoyed) on the idiosyncrasies of our child, of their "foolish acts", to actually celebrate them. Do you know when a toddler oft drops things, like their spoons, because they actually trying to learn that objects actually does not lie still in mid-air? Now you do. ...more |
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1
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Nov 03, 2022
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Nov 10, 2022
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Nov 09, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 9834923309
| 9789834923303
| 9834923309
| 4.33
| 6
| unknown
| 2020
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it was ok
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None
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1
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not set
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not set
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Oct 30, 2022
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| 0404548784
| 9780404548780
| 0404548784
| 4.50
| 2
| Dec 31, 1975
| Dec 31, 1975
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really liked it
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The state of Perak, in its past histories, is a turbulent country. Its destinies are akin to the countries who stood as buffer states or marches, not
The state of Perak, in its past histories, is a turbulent country. Its destinies are akin to the countries who stood as buffer states or marches, not that different from the countries of Flanders, Low Countries or perhaps more aptly, the Kingdoms of Poland. Readily at its genesis, it was challenged by the successor of Malacca, the Johor-Riau Empire. Perak was the second son despite the founder being in fact the eldest son of the last Sultan of Malacca. Its position was immediately across to the mighty state of Acheh, who subdued and dominated the fate of this shoot of a country for almost a century. Almost immediately after the waning of the Achehnese power, the country was subjected to proxy control of the Dutch, due to its richness with tin. The country was then subjected to raids and conquests by adventurers of Bugis and Minangkabau, and later by Siam. Perak slugged its way to the modern era with the installment of Ngah Ibrahim as an independent ruler of Larut. His father Long Jaafar single-handedly opened the waste of an area to the most lucrative region with tin, with it required the laborers of China. But with them, came the rival houses of syndicate which each slight potentially carried with it the embers of an open war. Open war indeed arrived, with Ngah Ibrahim’s weak policies and the intercine struggles between the rival Sultans, came the intervention of the British. The installment of J.W.W Birch as its first Resident need no further words; his fateful murder eventually opened Perak to deeper intervention, and with it modernity (to a certain extent). Below are a summary of the Perak royal line. It consists of two great houses, the Houses of Malacca-Perak and Siak-Perak. The Perak royal line began with the defeat and flight of the last Sultan of Malacca, the Sultan Mahmud, who later ruled from his seat of Kampar. He has two sons, the second son who was born from his hard-won relation with Tun Fatimah (which he killed Tun Fatimah’s husband in order to marry her) succeeded his place and became the ruler of the successor state Johor-Malacca; this second son was called as Sultan Alaudin Riayat Shah II. Sultan Mahmud’s eldest son, who was born from a Kelantanese lady, was sent to become the ruler of Perak at its local chief’s instigation; he was known as Sultan Muzaffar Shah I. Sultan Muzaffar Shah I (1) established the rule of House Perak-Malacca. His son Sultan Mansur I (2) succeeded him, but after his death, Perak was invaded by Acheh and the entire royal family was brought captive to Acheh. By a turn of fate, Sultan Mansur Shah’s eldest son was chosen as the next Sultan of Acheh, the Sultan Alaudin Mansur Syah. Now a province of Acheh, the Sultan Alaudin sent his brother Sultan Ahmad Tajudin (3) to rule Perak at his stead. Sultan Ahmad Tajudin’s brother, Sultan Tajul Arifin (4) succeeded him. He was in turn succeeded by the son of the late Sultan Ahmad Tajudin, called Sultan Alaudin Shah (5). Sultan Alaudin Shah was then succeeded by his uncle, the Sultan Mukadam Shah (6). After his time, Perak was invaded again by the Achehnese, who captured the whole royal family except Sultan Alaudin Shah’s brother, who managed to escape and then was invited to rule as the Sultan Mansur (7) by the local chiefs. Clearly against the will of the Acheh, they invaded again and seized the Sultan and replaced him with a proxy of them, then ruled as Sultan Mahmud Shah (8), who was the younger brother of Sultan Mukadam Shah. Sultan Mahmud Shah was then succeeded by Sultan Salehudin (9), who also died in the captivity of the Achehnese. Thus ended the direct male line of the House of Malacca-Perak. The Achehnese chose among its captivity, a Raja Sulong who descended from the royal House of Siak from his father's side and the Bendaharas of Johor from the maternal side. Raja Sulong ruled as Sultan Muzaffar Shah II (10). He was then succeeded by his son Sultan Mahmud Iskandar (11). Sultan Mahmud’s brother Sultan Mansur died without having the chance to ascend the throne, thus his eldest Sultan Alauddin (12) succeeded Sultan Mahmud. Sultan Alauddin was contested by his brother, who later deposed him and ruled as Sultan Muzaffar Shah III (13), who was my 8th ancestor from my paternal grandmother’s line. Sultan Muzaffar Shah co-ruled with his rival-brother which later deposed him with the aid of Minangkabau adventurers, and ruled as Sultan Muhammad (14). He was succeeded by his sons, who ruled successively, Sultan Iskandar Zulkarnain (15), Sultan Mahmud Shah (16), Sultan Alaudin Mansur (17) and Sultan Ahmaddin (18). The Sultan’s son ascended the throne as Sultan Abdul Malik Mansur Shah (19). The Sultan’s son succeeded him as Sultan Abdullah Muazzam (20). His cousin whose father was the late Sultan Ahmaddin’s son, Sultan Shahbudin (21) ascended the throne of Perak. His cousin then succeeded him as Sultan Abdullah Muhammad (22). Sultan Jaafar Muazzam (23), who was the grandson of Sultan Abdul Malik via his daughter, succeeded him. The son of late Sultan Shahbudin succeeded him, the Sultan Ali Mukammal (24). He was then succeeded by his cousin (who descended from another son of Sultan Aladdin), Sultan Ismail Muabidin (25). It was during his troubled reign, his conflicts with the notorious Sultan Abdullah happened. ...more |
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1
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Sep 18, 2022
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Sep 24, 2022
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Sep 24, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 0872205657
| 9780872205659
| 0872205657
| 3.61
| 275
| 1077
| Mar 01, 2001
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really liked it
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It is not excessive to say that St Anselm was one of the first medieval philosophers that utilized reasoning in his argument in proving the existence
It is not excessive to say that St Anselm was one of the first medieval philosophers that utilized reasoning in his argument in proving the existence of God in the Middle Ages. He lived in an age where the dynamism of St Thomas Acquinas has been replaced by rigid and rote learning of scholasticism, the Christianity world choked with heavy dose of dogmatism. But he realized that reason and revelation stood with each other, instead of against. And thus he proposed a novel argument which since has been called as the ontological argument. He argues that we can think of a something-that-there-is-no-greater-of, and this is understood by our mind. At the same time we also can think of that something-that-there-is-no-greater-of to be exist, and this is beyond mere thought. And existence is greater than mere thought. Because God is something-that-there-is-greater of, thus God exists. The argument clearly begged the question of there is difference between what we think and what actually exists. Gaunilo rebutted Anselm by saying that when we think of an island in the middle of nowhere, it does not follows that there is indeed such island. But that is just evading and downplaying the argument. If I think of a probable thing, such as Hercules is the strongest man in the world, then indeed it follows that my thoughts does not necessarily entails its truth, or its existence. But it we think of a necessary thing, such as the rising of Sun, or that human are mortal, the robustness of its necessity guaranteed its truthfulness, and thus its existence. Because something Absolute must exists, such as natural laws , causality etc, the springfountain of the Absoluteness must also exists. Just as the fragrance is something necessary to be perceived by everyone cognizant, the fragrance points towards the existence of itself and also its cause. The directionality and relationality of our perception necessitates this. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 14, 2022
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Sep 14, 2022
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Sep 14, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0691037116
| 9780691037110
| 0691037116
| 4.12
| 49
| Apr 14, 1997
| Apr 14, 1997
|
it was amazing
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This book is a stellar anthology on the keyworks expounding on the political doctrine of Conservatism. It manages to outline the complex breadth and d
This book is a stellar anthology on the keyworks expounding on the political doctrine of Conservatism. It manages to outline the complex breadth and depth of Conservatism without reducing it to mere caricatures and polemics. From Hume down to Schumpeter, this anthology is a must read for everyone who wishes to understand one of the persistent themes in ideological war. Conservatism, despite the name that insinuates rigidity and backwardness, is in reality one of the more effervescent of political ideas. Conservatism implies to conserve something that is already is, and something that is already is a constant factor that nevertheless evolves over time. The defense of an institution does not mean championing its monolith, but rather making more space for eventual expansion. Conservatism thus, in a glance, occupies many different positions and ideologies, depending on the country, simply because conservatism is a positional ideology rather than a catch-all view of governance. This is crystallized, in a phrase, by the words of Keynes, “When the data changes, so does my opinion. How about you (gentlemen)?”. It is a positional ideology that follows closely to the Land, a society that has experienced specific episodes of history compared to the free-floating and blatant rationalism of Liberalism. Conservatism insisted that a universalistic notion driven by rationalism would overestimate the benefit of revolutions while at the same time underestimate its consequences- as shown by the French Revolution. It is the voice of reform, the Conservatives, believes through peaceful revolutions (such as the Magna Carta and to a certain extent, the Glorious Revolution) that insists on the prevailing concord between the ruler and the ruled, or through the more violent American Revolution- which, in essence, is a positional and specific response of the Americans defending their colonial freedom. Nowhere the Conservatives believed in constant revolutions everytime the society experienced a mental change or trauma, but seek for a stable government that allows the nursing of such traumatic experience. Conservatism also, due to its suspicions towards rationalism (Burke wrote that “their abstract perfection is their practical defect), does not waste its time in weighing political events with the scale of good vs. evil. For the Liberals, there is indeed a boogeyman that stands as a force of evil that constrains and sucks on the blood of the people, for the Conservatives, there is only maladaption that requires reform. It is not within the limited wisdom of men to enforce its own privations of good versus evil to the ruled, there is no solution to the dreamt battle against evil, there is only trade-offs and reforms responding to specific situations. What is politically right is then not necessarily the Good (because what is good as conceived by a person, is not necessarily Good to all, and it is a rat-chase to discover such a priori truth in a complex society), but it is Utility. In Utility there resides Good (albeit not in its definitional form), while Good not necessarily resides in Consequentialism of the Liberals. Thus, the essence of conservative thoughts would be of historical utilitarianism. It is specific to the Land it prospers, and it champions constant reform rather than free-floating radical positivistic measures. That is why the conservatism of America would be different in its specific policies and standing in comparison to the conservatism of Malaysia, but nevertheless they share the thoughts of stability. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 25, 2022
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Sep 03, 2022
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Sep 03, 2022
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Paperback
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| 9671070418
| 9789671070413
| 9671070418
| 4.08
| 13
| 2012
| 2012
|
liked it
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I've been following Prof Zainiy's works diligently, after totally charmed by al-Lataif al-Asrar. When I heard this work would be reprinted, I immediat
I've been following Prof Zainiy's works diligently, after totally charmed by al-Lataif al-Asrar. When I heard this work would be reprinted, I immediately put an order to it with total excitement. The title hinted of perhaps an overarching idea on civilization, with analysis and ideas perhaps at par with The Muqaddimah or Clash of Civilization, or perhaps a sociological counterpart of al-Attas' Prolegomena. However, I think this book is more similar in presentation, scope, tone with al-Attas' Epistles for the Muslims, which is more of a collection of ideas and paeans and exhortations on the non-physical attributes of civilization. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 27, 2022
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Aug 28, 2022
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Aug 27, 2022
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Paperback
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| B000FCK206
| 4.06
| 77,862
| Mar 16, 2004
| Jul 2018
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really liked it
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A good book on the history and the role of Genghis Khan and his descendants to the world.
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 30, 2022
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Aug 2022
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Aug 01, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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| 0525434151
| 9780525434153
| 0525434151
| 3.53
| 2,342
| 1961
| Nov 27, 2018
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liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 30, 2022
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Jul 30, 2022
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Jul 29, 2022
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Paperback
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| 009928278X
| 9780099282785
| 009928278X
| 3.70
| 3,070
| 1960
| Jan 01, 1999
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it was amazing
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Mishima’s sad novella carried within it two folds of themes; that of a pathological love and also the futility of radicalism. It is unique in that it
Mishima’s sad novella carried within it two folds of themes; that of a pathological love and also the futility of radicalism. It is unique in that it succeeded to include between the lines the emptiness of a radical, anti-establishment ideas. One must not forget that Mishima is a fervent supporter of the old order. An emptiness that trived to fill the emptiness would in the end filling more the abyss. A world where a sickness can cure a sickness is extremely rare, a wet dream of a homeopathists. More and more our generation produces throngs of empty people, who thrived necessarily on fads and scams. Easily the modicum of civility remains would be thrown at anything sturdy, forgetting that a person inflicted by a disease would emit a saint-like holiness. Kazu, our protagonist are exactly one who had lived her life in a busy hollowness that hoped her late love-life would cover up her emptiness. This is exactly the pathos of our age. When the study of causality is being conceived as a useless idea like the idea of monarchy, just like the modernist Russell said, we have borned a generation that confuses the head for the toes and vice versa. Love is not a cure, but it is an intensification and extension of a healthy life. One might object that how frequent one could live a healthy and serene life, and then we can behold how exactly true my first sentence in the paragraph. A serene and healthy life is the primal goal and the destination of our endeavor first and foremost in life. It is not a privilege reserved for the very few, but an inherent achievement clouded by misplaced both, optimism and pessimism. One should marry because one is ready to share his private cornucopia to two. And one should have children because his firm steps in life afford him such surplus he would wish his sons and daughters to be born into this world, no matter how hard it is. But everyday the birth ledger are filled with children born out from parents who barely can keep themselves in their conjugal bed at night, and barely pulled themselves out from it due to heavy sedation of despair born not from rightful pangs of thoughtful investigation or the unfortunate clutches of hereditary shadows, but from sloth, gluttony, lust and other negative but preventable attributes. When one entered into a contract with such pathology, one could not help but to exert oneself to fill the quench. But just like expecting the desert’s thirst to be quenched with a glass of water, the effort would be furtile and one is forced to over-extend oneself. When one found no physical route to accomplish that, one must resort to mirages and phantastical ideas that is more and more detached from reality. And because of this farce, Kazu rightly described that “…that all she had done entirely of her own volition was actually the working of an unhappy destiny…” But at the end of the day, this is a masterful work on human psychology. What I mean by human psychology is that Mishima intended to write an all-too-human work, instead of a moral work that wished to lay down an eternal principle. Kazu’s vitality would not ever mixed with Noguchi’s lofty ideals, no matter how each tried to. Love, is after all, an operational definition. It is love as far as both worked hard for its continuance, rather than it existing as an a priori principle between two people. This melancholic serenity that Mishima masterfully sailed towards the end of the novel is exemplar. The scene where Kazu’s faced trial in front of Noguchi’s ultimatum: her whole life flashed before her. Before this, she ironically embraced fatality for a place in a tombstone, and for that she traded away hope. By the time she opened her closed eyes, her decision was firm. As Yamazki rightly puts it in the end, “…You were probably right in returning to warm blood and a human vitality, and Mr Noguchi is right too in returning to lofty ideals and beautiful principles. It may seem cruel for me to say it, but from the eyes of an outsider, everything has found its place, the birds have all returned to its nests…" ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 28, 2022
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Jul 29, 2022
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Jul 29, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0099530279
| 9780099530275
| 0099530279
| 3.64
| 6,518
| Jun 30, 1950
| Jan 01, 2009
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really liked it
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“What’s love? It’s nothing more than symbol falling for symbol." This work, unfortunately, is not an examination to discover the true meaning of love. “What’s love? It’s nothing more than symbol falling for symbol." This work, unfortunately, is not an examination to discover the true meaning of love. Rather, it is a work of wallowing in pathological love par excellence. Mishima certainly is not so myopic as he would believe the kind of “love” he wrote in this work to be Love (and he proved that he indeed knows that virtue, as later he discovered and wrote in The Sound of Wave), but he was simply swept by the storm and ennui of his times. Post-war Japan was indeed a hellish place to live with, pathologies run rampant, in both physically and mentally, as readily propagated by war-stricken people. At a global stage, the war has indeed prepared a context for such macabre interpretation of essential virtues of life, distorted by extreme skepticism and nihilism. After discovering what one man can do to the another, Man realised with horror that he essentially knows nothing about the second person, but readily exposed to full effects and repercussion initiated by him. Sartre would summarise this quite splendidly, “Hell is the other people”. And such, love as portrayed in this work is a by-product of tension, mainly jealousy. “If you can deny yourself jealousy, you can stop loving”. Readily, it threw love as a passive principle, a chimeral product rather than an active dynamic virtue. And this is exemplified by the relationship Etsuko had with Ryosuke, essentially 2 people who cannot fathom the other, but readily enjoyed themselves in triggering an inevitable effect by routine acts of abuse, and on the same breath, delighted masochistically being on the receiving end. In a complex chain reaction of unknown causes, one could only delight in its by-products. But abstractions as haphazard as that surely won’t fulfilled heart’s desires. It requires a physical mark, but if the fundamentals are yet to be grasped, this hunt for a physical mark would only be a twisted tale. Just like Etsuko, in her frenzy, dug her fingernails into Saburo’s back, her first mark in contact with Saburo. A symbol now slowly settling into a tangible object, starting to materialise and to be grasped. “Almost unconsciously she lifted it (the blood-stained nails) to her lips.” But of course, jealousy is an abstraction when the self relates onto itself and saw itself limited from advancement. No physicality can cure this pathological abstraction, except by mending the paradoxical relation within oneself. And this inability to do so that causes tragico-comic situations we often heard: on how disappointed one became when one is granted the object of one’s desire, on how nothing can quench their thirst, for love... ...more |
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1
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Jul 24, 2022
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Jul 24, 2022
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Jul 24, 2022
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385423756
| 9780385423755
| 0385423756
| 4.03
| 704
| Dec 01, 1994
| Jan 01, 1996
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really liked it
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This book examines 5 case studies throughout the age, to prove tha
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 09, 2022
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Jun 16, 2022
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Jun 16, 2022
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Paperback
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| 4.26
| 65
| unknown
| Jun 21, 2021
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it was amazing
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This is an incredibly stellar book, aiming for an amelioration between Islam and evolution. Reactionary response towards the West has unfortunately cr
This is an incredibly stellar book, aiming for an amelioration between Islam and evolution. Reactionary response towards the West has unfortunately created an excessive whiplash, to a point of backwardness and rigidity. Science has slowly been removed into the periphery as an agent of the West, rather than an essential tool to appreciate the wonder and complexity of Nature. This book has masterfully ended the bitterest sore between Islam and science: evolution. We mostly knows nothing more about evolution other than the caricature of chimps turning into man. It is something more than that. First of all, we must distinguish between Darwinism and evolution. Evolution is a belief of gradual change and distinguished by three cardinal features; deep time (that the universe has existed for millions of years), common ancestry and natural selection and random mutation. Darwinism or more accurately its inheritor Neo-Darwinism, added a reactionary flavor to the idea of evolution: radical naturalism. Islam has no problem in accepting the tenets of evolution, only the second point are still inconclusive among scholars. Islam accepted that the world is indeed old by millions of years, because the phrase "created the world in 6 days" are interpreted as 6 epochs, not literally as three years. While the Quran is indeed not a book of science, but it is a book that elucidates the working of God. And if the works of God as presented empirically shows that the world is indeed ancient, then surely the sentence should not be interpreted literally, if not then God's actions and his Words would conflict. Natural selection and its component random selection are not an issue in Islamic worldview because it simply describes the actions of adaptation and specification. Random does not mean haphazard and independent process, but simply the outcome relies on the specific conditions an organism is subjected too. The second point, common ancestry, on the other hand is interpreted in few ways. There are generally 4 schools of thoughts in Islam regarding the position of man in the evolutionary schemes; creationism, human exceptionalism, Adamic exceptionalism and no exceptions. Creationism describes man as miraculously created and with no need for gradual change. Human exceptionalism believes that pro-hominids does exists but only the sons of Adam that emerged as homo sapiens, that is only sons of Adams that should rightly be called as humans. Adamic exceptionalism believes that there are hominids that branched into modern humans, but only sons of Adam that triumphed across the ages. No exceptions school believes that Adam is directly descended from apes, that with God's will intelligence arise from Adam the first human via direct process of evolution, thus the Garden of Eden and Adam's descent is merely a metaphor. Orthodox Islam has no problem whatsoever with the first 3 ideas, but only marginally with the 4th ideas. Miracles can be defined as direct divine interventions, usually related with a breach of laws of nature. But we must realize that what science provides is mere description on the laws of phenomenon, restricted cognitively and temporally. Science derives its rigor from laws of induction, but never a priori. On the other hand, science derives its conclusion from the regularity of effects, not the establishment of laws sub specie aeternitis. Thus, its conclusions are contingent and it does not contradictory because God "breached" the laws of phenomenon, but not the laws of Nature as He understood it. If He wills so, He could create universes which our current laws of physics and chemicals does not hold. Interpretation of Quranic verses should not be done so it could fit "current" scientific explanation, only when it approximates to apparent contradictory to logically necessary axioms, and this is only because our lack of cognitive apparatus to understand those verses. When God mentioned of His Hands, it is clear that He does not have any inkling resemblances to anything that we understood as hands as this is logically impossible, so it is here permissible to interpret it as "His Power". But not in the case of mentions of miracles where while it is phenomenally impossible, it is not logically impossible for an omnipotent God. Islam generally have the inherent metaphysical capability in accepting evolution (not Darwinism) because of pure occasionalism adhered by the majority Asharites and also the Sufis. Islam primarily believes that God is the fountain of absolutely everything, and is under His complete Power and Will. What does this means is that the contingency of the created is that of par excellence; till it cannot be conceived that everything existing could even persistently exists even between two iota of unit-time; everything is ever-annihilated and ever-created by God's Will and Power. Thus, it is not that far of a stretch to conceive of a constantly adapting and revolving world. The world is at total flux that the only thing that is persistently and absolutely in existing is God's Revelation. To summarize, Islam describes a perfect median of a relationship with science. It does not accept science under the lens of metaphysical naturalism; the belief that nature is all there is, but only accept methodological naturalism, that the world could be described in so far as it is presented to ourselves under the name of law of phenomenon, but not the things-themselves under the law of Nature. Islam readily accepted the notion of evolution exactly because of its occasionalism. ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 25, 2022
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Jun 03, 2022
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Jun 01, 2022
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0471159638
| 9780471159636
| 0471159638
| 3.90
| 239
| Apr 1994
| Aug 15, 1996
|
really liked it
|
[9:13 am, 20/05/2022] Sidi M. Yusoff: The book propounds the monogenetic theory of origin of language. What this means is that the author believes tha
[9:13 am, 20/05/2022] Sidi M. Yusoff: The book propounds the monogenetic theory of origin of language. What this means is that the author believes that all languages originated from a single mother-language. This thesis is problematic exactly because there’s no records at all regarding this proto-language; it is a mere speculation. But we do have ample scientific evidence that the triumph of the homo sapiens correlated directly with the expansion and maturation of the neocortex; the part of brain that is responsible for critical and abstract thinking. Abstract thinking extends beyond the thing it connotes; this is the very definition of a concept. A concept internalizes is what we called as a thought, a concept externalizes is what we called as a word; a language. Thus, the maturity of us as a species yielded an almost concurrent appearance of language. While we certainly could not find any written records of a proto-language, we certainly found concrete signs of concepts externalized; burials, ritual sites. These landmarks certainly could not exist without any language, which certainly prior to complex concepts mentioned above. A major difference between concrete signs of concepts and the abstract ones is that the former is static, while the latter is dynamic. Burial sites buried beneath the sands of time, while languages evolve as soon as community break away from their respective geographical and historical receptacle. In a primitive and highly volatile community, it is wiser to expand on day to day expedient creations rather than expending time and energy for something unprofitable as writing. Tightly knit groups only requires passed down stories, not writing. Communities are egalitarian and property rights are not well developed, there would be some more time before the first writing recorded in Sumerian about property inventory. The homo sapiens must possess strong conceptual thinking by the time they migrated out-of-Africa. The moment these first waves of human migration departed, they faced extreme divergent geographical and historical encounters that provides more and specific cues that shapes firstly, the worldview of a group and then later, the language. Mitochondrial studies succeeded in identifying the biological “Eve”, from which every modern human originated from. This Eve lived somewhere in today Ethiopia some 50-80,000 years ago. This biological Eve does not prove the existence of the biblical Eve, because it only means the current modern human originated from this single woman, while the rest of her contemporary’s offspring extinguished over time. Therefore, I cohere to the thought that language tied with ethnicity. An ethnic while indeed possessing more of a social construct rather than biological, is nevertheless an actual concept as each ethnicity possessed specific worldviews shaped by their geographical and historical context. It is only during recent times this sharp distinguishing factors soften as an impact from globalization. Several factors persists, however. Non-native French speakers above the age of adolescents, cannot master entirely the specific inflections in French vocabulary. So does non-native speakers of Chinese, Japanese and other more complex languages. First generation chimeras who dedicated themselves to copy the culture they want remains as an abnormality among the native people; they either could produce a child who eventually assimilate to the native culture, or if unable to secure a partner, would simply dissipates as a persistent outsider. Such are the real truth of globalization. Coming back to the monogenesis theory. Ruhlen extrapolates the existence of families and super-families based on similarity of cognates. Cognates are words that are related to each other phonetically. For an example, it is not hard to see how the French peuple and Spanish poplar are related in a family, and this family is also related to Latin, as people in Latin is populus. Thus French and Spanish are members of a language family called as Romance, which is a product of Roman expansion. Latin, on the other hand resonates with the Sanskrit praja, which while certainly not as similar as previous example, retains similar basic form of phonetics which change due to erosion and shifts over time. So Ruhlen able to extrapolate the existence of language families and then super-families (like Indo-European), and onwards to a single primal language. This primal language certainly does not been supported by any written or archeological evidence, simply because of above mentioned reasons. I would like to close my thoughts on this book by touching on a sore topic: the Austronesian Expansion. According to Ruhlen, the Austronesian language originated from the Tai-Kadai people in Southern China. The Tai-Kadai people then migrated to the Phillipines southward. For convenience sake, I would call his idea the Southeast Expansion. But archeological and genetic studies supports completely opposite idea. Expansion from Africa arrived earlier to the Southeast Asia via route from India to Burma and then to the previously Sundaland. Expansion from Africa northward and then onto the Chinese mainland arrived much later simply because of the harsher terrains. So it is not possible for the Tai-Kadai to expand into southeast, simply because they came from southeast then northeastward into Southern China. By the time people actually arrived in China, it is approximately 2000-5000 years later and they already conglomerated to the proto-Sino-Tibetan people, which linguistics is distinguished from the Tai-Kadai people. Thus the inhabitation of Southern China and perhaps Japan, sparked from a northward expansion from Southeast Asia, not the way around. It was only due to Sino-Tibetan infringement that the Tai-Kadai people migrated into the Indochina and the Formosan people were pushed to Phillipines and Southeast Asia as the new Austronesian people. [9:46 am, 20/05/2022] Sidi M. Yusoff: The book propounds the monogenetic theory of origin of language. What this means is that the author believes that all languages originated from a single mother-language. This thesis is problematic exactly because there’s no records at all regarding this proto-language; it is a mere speculation. But we do have ample scientific evidence that the triumph of the homo sapiens correlated directly with the expansion and maturation of the neocortex; the part of brain that is responsible for critical and abstract thinking. Abstract thinking extends beyond the thing it connotes; this is the very definition of a concept. A concept internalizes is what we called as a thought, a concept externalizes is what we called as a word; a language. Thus, the maturity of us as a species yielded an almost concurrent appearance of language. While we certainly could not find any written records of a proto-language, we certainly found concrete signs of concepts externalized; burials, ritual sites. These landmarks certainly could not exist without any language, which certainly prior to complex concepts mentioned above. A major difference between concrete signs of concepts and the abstract ones is that the former is static, while the latter is dynamic. Burial sites buried beneath the sands of time, while languages evolve as soon as community break away from their respective geographical and historical receptacle. In a primitive and highly volatile community, it is wiser to expand on day to day expedient creations rather than expending time and energy for something unprofitable as writing. Tightly knit groups only requires passed down stories, not writing. Communities are egalitarian and property rights are not well developed, there would be some more time before the first writing recorded in Sumerian about property inventory. The homo sapiens must possess strong conceptual thinking by the time they migrated out-of-Africa. The moment these first waves of human migration departed, they faced extreme divergent geographical and historical encounters that provides more and specific cues that shapes firstly, the worldview of a group and then later, the language. Mitochondrial studies succeeded in identifying the biological “Eve”, from which every modern human originated from. This Eve lived somewhere in today Ethiopia some 50-80,000 years ago. This biological Eve does not prove the existence of the biblical Eve, because it only means the current modern human originated from this single woman, while the rest of her contemporary’s offspring extinguished over time. Therefore, I cohere to the thought that language tied with ethnicity. An ethnic while indeed possessing more of a social construct rather than biological, is nevertheless an actual concept as each ethnicity possessed specific worldviews shaped by their geographical and historical context. It is only during recent times this sharp distinguishing factors soften as an impact from globalization. Several factors persists, however. Non-native French speakers above the age of adolescents, cannot master entirely the specific inflections in French vocabulary. So does non-native speakers of Chinese, Japanese and other more complex languages. First generation chimeras who dedicated themselves to copy the culture they want remains as an abnormality among the native people; they either could produce a child who eventually assimilate to the native culture, or if unable to secure a partner, would simply dissipates as a persistent outsider. Such are the real truth of globalization. Coming back to the monogenesis theory. Ruhlen extrapolates the existence of families and super-families based on similarity of cognates. Cognates are words that are related to each other phonetically. For an example, it is not hard to see how the French peuple and Spanish poplar are related in a family, and this family is also related to Latin, as people in Latin is populus. Thus French and Spanish are members of a language family called as Romance, which is a product of Roman expansion. Latin, on the other hand resonates with the Sanskrit praja, which while certainly not as similar as previous example, retains similar basic form of phonetics which change due to erosion and shifts over time. So Ruhlen able to extrapolate the existence of language families and then super-families (like Indo-European), and onwards to a single primal language. This primal language certainly does not been supported by any written or archeological evidence, simply because of above mentioned reasons. I would like to close my thoughts on this book by touching on a sore topic: the Austronesian Expansion. According to Ruhlen, the Austronesian language originated from the Tai-Kadai people in Southern China. The Tai-Kadai people then migrated to the Phillipines southward. For convenience sake, I would call his idea the Southeast Expansion. But archeological and genetic studies supports completely opposite idea. Expansion from Africa arrived earlier to the Southeast Asia via route from India to Burma and then to the previously Sundaland. Expansion from Africa northward and then onto the Chinese mainland arrived much later simply because of the harsher terrains. So it is not possible for the Tai-Kadai to expand into southeast, simply because they came from southeast then northeastward into Southern China. By the time people actually arrived in China, it is approximately 2000-5000 years later and they already conglomerated to the proto-Sino-Tibetan people, which linguistics is distinguished from the Tai-Kadai people. Thus the inhabitation of Southern China and perhaps Japan, sparked from a northward expansion from Southeast Asia, not the way around. It was only due to Sino-Tibetan infringement that the Tai-Kadai people migrated into the Indochina and the Formosan people were pushed to Phillipines and Southeast Asia as the new Austronesian people. Addendum: the spread of modern human There's several theories on origin of modern human. One is unipolar origin, which suggests that modern human originated from a single pole, and that pole usually assumed by Africa. Secondly, is the multipolar origin, which believed man sprung from multiple independent regions, indicated by the existence of proto-sapiens like the Peking or Java Man. Genetically, the second theory is disproved from mitochondrial studies that shows all modern human is related to a single mitochondria of a woman in Africa sometime 100,000 years ago. But this mitochondrial studies does not exclude the existence of other matrilineal lineage that went extinc over time. Personally, I adhere to the hybrid theory that stated while indeed current modern human are essentially originated from a single woman, there is multiple independent existing proto-sapiens across the world. These are the famous Neanderthal, Peking and Java Man. But these colonies of people eventually either hunted to extinction or intermarried into the new out-of-Africa migrators. The first out-of-Africa migrations divides mankind into an African and non-African subgroup. The second division occurs from the Fertile Crescents, which separated the Eurasian and the Southeast/Oceanic people. The group that remains in the Fertile Crescent intermixed with their African cousins to yield the Afro-Asiatic people. This occurs perhaps around 70,000-80,000 years ago. The Southeast/Oceanic people continued southwards, leaving Dravidian offshoots in the Indian subcontinent, into the Malay Archipelago, and then proceeded either towards Australia or northwards to the Philipines or Southern China. They then reached the Bering Straits, crossed it and begot the Amerind people. The Bering Straits later submerged by water, the expansion into America was approximated to be around 12,000 years ago. This is the primary expansion of modern human across the world, driven by momentum of climate change of Africa. Secondary expansion of mankind sparked by the emergence of agriculture and to a lesser extent, climate change. Agriculture sparked the spread of people from Anatolia northwards into Europe, begotting the people of Indo-European. At the same time, the Euroasiatic people has reached the Chinese mainland from Siberia, crystallizing into the Sino-Tibetan people. The spread of Sino-Tibetan people, on the other hand, sparked the migration of the Tai-Kadai people into Indo-China, giving birth to the Austroasiatic people. It also propelled the Formosan people migration, these Austronesian people then intermixed with the local populace of Southeast Asia. In Japan, the earlier people of Yayoi (which might originate from a fringe of people heading towards the Bering people), was displaced by the arrival of the Jomon people, who spoke a more distant form of the Altaic (which in turn a branch of the Turkic, a branch of the Indo-European), and then later gives rise to the Japanese. At the same time, the Bantu expanded southwards into Africa. The third expansion of mankind is sparked by the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World, creating an influx of Europeans and Africans into the Northern and Southern America. ...more |
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| Aug 2021
| Aug 2021
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This is an unexpectedly concise and informative work, elucidating on the shadowy Malayan kingdom of Sriwijaya. It is extremely difficult in current ti
This is an unexpectedly concise and informative work, elucidating on the shadowy Malayan kingdom of Sriwijaya. It is extremely difficult in current times to differentiate between the works of reaction and polemic, with the ones definitive and authoritative. But the author again resisted the temptation, and put out a succinctly informative and veritable work, using multiple sources from both local and Orientalists. Sriwijaya is an elusive kingdom, that researchers are still debating on the exact location of its epicentre. It is not as in the case of Rome or Mecca, which exact rise and fall in its history could be pinpointed; rather it is as mysterious as finding the biblical cities. We have to reconstruct everything using every arsenal of information; from Chinese chronicles down to archaeological evidences. Even then, we have to employ deductive reasoning to come to a reasonable conclusion. From I-Ching records, we can safely say that the centre of Sriwijaya kingdom was in Palembang, Sumatra. And from Chinese court records, we could estimate the rise of the kingdom in the late 650-670's, as it was during these period Sriwijaya envoys paid tribute to the Emperor; and these could only done by sovereign states. We could also surmise that due to the inland nature of Palembang, the location is not ideal for development, thus conquests of entrepots along the Malaccan Straits were inevitable. Rapid expansion to the neighbouring slightly-more ancient kingdom of Malayu initiated, followed by submission of Kedah Tua, Kelantan, Ghari and Funan. Thus, Sriwijaya can thrive and develop from the bounty provided by dense trading activities in these key ports. What propels the expansion of Sriwijaya, to my opinion, is the natural desire by burgeoning kingdom who developed concrete law and order, intensified by it being a hotspot for Buddhists scholars and monks. Sriwijaya while not as industrious in building the candis, or Buddhist worship-temples, their rule could also be described as religious in temperament, as shown by the priest-like denotation of their kings. The expansion of Sriwijaya might as well as a secular osmosis, a sequelae from religious consolidation. Sriwijaya kings ruled under a feudal system; which each datus ruled their own mandala (or fiefs), while the "Dapunta" or the maharaja ruled his own mandala. The totality of the mandalas, or bhumi submitted to the rule of the Dapunta. Sriwijaya thrives economically by conquering key ports within the Archipelago, aside from enjoying the prestige of becoming a centre of Buddhist learning and under the protection of the Imperial Son of Heaven. The lifetime of an empire followed a more or less determined template: that power gradient necessitates an osmotic expansion, expansion leads to prosperity, prosperity promotes further gradient, expansion creates over-stretching, over-stretching leads to disintegration. From the top, expansion of the royal houses, aside from causing the inevitable birth of a pack of weak rulers, it would also provide a surplus of royal princes which would lead to bickering. Either it would lead to transient succession of princes as in the Roman Third Century crisis, or spiralled down to Ottoman fratricide. The only ameliorating way would be the Diocletian jettison of dividing the empire to crown princes. Sriwijaya inevitably splits into two; the Sumatran and the Javan dynasty known as the Sailendra, which in turns warred against each other. Reactions against newly converted Perlak Shiite kingdom and perhaps greed caused increased taxation and control over trade. Which inevitably incite the wrath of the Indian kingdom of Chola, whose merchants heavily dependent to the Sriwijaya as the conduit between East and West. Chola invaded, leaving Sriwijaya weak and famished economically. Peripheral states rebelled and declared themselves dependent. Leaving Sriwijaya isolated in its already isolated capital of Palembang, causing it to be invaded by the revived first enemy of the kingdom, Malayu. A great work. ...more |
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| 9671734472
| 4.22
| 40
| Feb 2020
| Feb 2020
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Hamzah Fansuri This is one of the earlier works of al-Attas that showcases the brilliance of his even in his early years. He might be the first scholar Hamzah Fansuri This is one of the earlier works of al-Attas that showcases the brilliance of his even in his early years. He might be the first scholar that unpacks the mystical figure of Hamzah Fansuri to its full splendor, elucidating the true meaning of his teachings and to strip away the misunderstandings. Hamzah Fansuri could be the first Malay mystic that expounds the doctrine of Unity of Existence in the Malay Archipelago systematically. He was also the first one to be misunderstood and his name and works ended up in the bonfires. The doctrine of Unity of Existence, in its most potent form, could be found in the works of al-Arabi. One could only peek at the first few pages of his work only to retreat in confusion. One could only stand bewildered and wonder, to decide whether his words are poetic in nature, or factual. Should we take his belief that God is both transcendent and immanent in the World, or that God is limited by His creations in some way, as a fact or a lyrical allusion? One could say that one is poetic when he described his lover in a hyperbole. Could we say the same when the descriptions fall short from the lover’s actual beauty, or actually mocking her? At what point the lovely nibbles turned into a painful bite, to what extent intention should excuse action? To what point, the robustness of the law should make a leeway to aesthetic seesaw? If indeed the experience of the elect ones is the primal truth behind every fiber of existence, why cloth it behind poems and perplexing utterings? The robustness of the idea of Unity of Existence is an ontological truth, not merely a mystical vision. As I mentioned it many times elsewhere, it is the model that can enjoin two indubitable facts together: that of the Absoluteness of God and the Existence of the World. Hamzah Fansuri, owing his origin to the temperate people of the Malayan Archipelago, has etched his name in the firmaments for his success in introducing the idea to the people in a lucid and logical way. His poetic stanzas served as an embellishment or perhaps a memory or reinforcing aid to help drum his ideas in the heart, never as a tool to cause perplexity. It is actually quite amazing how the Indian scholar al-Raniri managed to pull a wool to people’s eyes, saying that the teaching of Hamzah Fansuri is a heretical one, while managing to write tomes of books that mirrors exactly that of Hamzah’s ideas. In this edition, Hamzah presented to the world 3 translated and annotated works of Hamzah’s, Asrar-al-Arifin, Sharab-al-Ashiqin and al-Muntahi; the one and only in the world. One could compare the lucidity of the prose in the Asrar to the basic texts of the pondok like that of the al-Durr al-Manzum, and the Sharab and Muntahi to the more advanced writings of al-Ghazzali in the Misykat. It is incredibly saddening how Hamzah have been sidelined for a simple magic trick of defaming his ideas, through confounding and conflating his specific terms and words to the high heavens. Perang Tamadun Melayu The author offers an apology for his inability to compile the entire martial history of the Malays in his “small book”. But his apology is not needed because he does a good job in this book, and I’ll explain about it in a bit. Cursorily, I would like to make a remark that in a new publishing house such as THE PATRIOTS, the temptation is very strong for amateur writers to submit their work and to bask in their ephemeral limelight. But THE PATRIOTS, so far their publications that I have read, have provided good works. The author of this book went the other way most amateur writers would stay into: producing work from Wikipedia sources or some obscure conspiracy theorists web. So this is a well done book. I would say despite the brevity of the book, the author has chosen apt nation-states to be covered. With the title, the author covered the martial history of the Malaccan and Johorean empire, and also brief chapters on Perak. The selection is exactly apt because the epithet Malay, in its most precise term, refers to the group of homogenous people whose ancestral origin lies along the Sungai Melayu in Eastern Sumatra. Historiographically, the Malays are the group who acknowledged the rule of Sang Sapurba and his descendents, as stated in the Malay Annals. This includes the people of Palembang, Siak, Jambi, the Riau Islands and later by extension, the people under Malaccan suzerainty. The Malay people emerged under the empire of Sriwijaya and later succeeded by the Malaccan Sultanate. The Pahang Sultanate emerged by fraternity, when the Prince Muhammad was exiled from Malacca and became the ruler of Pahang instead. After the fall of Malacca, the direct successor would be the Johor Empire. And by requests from the local people, the Johor princes established the royal houses of Perak, and Perak later provided Acheh with one prince, albeit transiently. Thus, what defines as a Malay are a subethnic of the Austronesian people, whose ancestral origin lies in the Sungai Melayu in Sumatra, and includes its offshoots under Malaccan suzerainty. Thus the author’s decision to just include these successor states in this book is as precise as it can be. The author derives his source from the Malay Annals and the Suma Oriental by Tome Pires, also views from Kunala , which I never heard before but frequently provides a tangential twist in this book. The history of the Archipelago, is far away from the Orientalists’ depiction of the Far East as an idyllic utopia inhabited by innocent savages. The political struggles between rival states equals any political drama by high nations of Europe and Middle East. The Triangle War (between Acheh-Johor-Portugal), in fact, are such complex that personally it echoes the political complexity as in the Crusades; the transient political alliances and betrayals throughout the campaign. As a conclusion, I would like to remark that the author’s decision to not include the history of the Reman Sultanate is also apt. This is because the Reman Sultanate has always been under Siam’s sway that much of its ephemeral existence is dedicated to be as one of Siam’s proxy. Kedah (includes Penang and Perlis), Terengganu and Kelantan are marches of the Malay people, and thus were subjected to shifting tides between Malacca, Siam and local rule. While Kedah’s history is especially rich and ancient, much of its attention is spent in deterring Siam rule and thus lies in the fringes of the main theater further south in the Straits. ...more |
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Hamzah Fansuri This is one of the earlier works of al-Attas that showcases the brilliance of his even in his early years. He might be the first scholar Hamzah Fansuri This is one of the earlier works of al-Attas that showcases the brilliance of his even in his early years. He might be the first scholar that unpacks the mystical figure of Hamzah Fansuri to its full splendor, elucidating the true meaning of his teachings and to strip away the misunderstandings. Hamzah Fansuri could be the first Malay mystic that expounds the doctrine of Unity of Existence in the Malay Archipelago systematically. He was also the first one to be misunderstood and his name and works ended up in the bonfires. The doctrine of Unity of Existence, in its most potent form, could be found in the works of al-Arabi. One could only peek at the first few pages of his work only to retreat in confusion. One could only stand bewildered and wonder, to decide whether his words are poetic in nature, or factual. Should we take his belief that God is both transcendent and immanent in the World, or that God is limited by His creations in some way, as a fact or a lyrical allusion? One could say that one is poetic when he described his lover in a hyperbole. Could we say the same when the descriptions fall short from the lover’s actual beauty, or actually mocking her? At what point the lovely nibbles turned into a painful bite, to what extent intention should excuse action? To what point, the robustness of the law should make a leeway to aesthetic seesaw? If indeed the experience of the elect ones is the primal truth behind every fiber of existence, why cloth it behind poems and perplexing utterings? The robustness of the idea of Unity of Existence is an ontological truth, not merely a mystical vision. As I mentioned it many times elsewhere, it is the model that can enjoin two indubitable facts together: that of the Absoluteness of God and the Existence of the World. Hamzah Fansuri, owing his origin to the temperate people of the Malayan Archipelago, has etched his name in the firmaments for his success in introducing the idea to the people in a lucid and logical way. His poetic stanzas served as an embellishment or perhaps a memory or reinforcing aid to help drum his ideas in the heart, never as a tool to cause perplexity. It is actually quite amazing how the Indian scholar al-Raniri managed to pull a wool to people’s eyes, saying that the teaching of Hamzah Fansuri is a heretical one, while managing to write tomes of books that mirrors exactly that of Hamzah’s ideas. In this edition, Hamzah presented to the world 3 translated and annotated works of Hamzah’s, Asrar-al-Arifin, Sharab-al-Ashiqin and al-Muntahi; the one and only in the world. One could compare the lucidity of the prose in the Asrar to the basic texts of the pondok like that of the al-Durr al-Manzum, and the Sharab and Muntahi to the more advanced writings of al-Ghazzali in the Misykat. It is incredibly saddening how Hamzah have been sidelined for a simple magic trick of defaming his ideas, through confounding and conflating his specific terms and words to the high heavens. ...more |
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| May 11, 2012
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Ethics, as demanded by reason, requires eternal and universality, but everywhere we encountered blocks by our personal inclinations and wants, and als
Ethics, as demanded by reason, requires eternal and universality, but everywhere we encountered blocks by our personal inclinations and wants, and also the excuse of conditions as presented in each situation. Kant insists that such universality does exists, and its existence is possible and even necessary, simply because it originated from the reason solely, not from experience; thus a priori. But it is a huge undertaking to provide a single precept from that lonely world of reason, and to prescribe it to this world of flux. Kant thus must show how such universality exists and how it bind people universally. What is ultimately good must first be an absolute binding law, and this cannot be found in the posterior world of experience. For the world of experience is first of all conditional and contingent; it does not supply maxims but only examples to support it, not to establish it. Secondly, experience provides blocks of inclination and excuses due to the very individualistic nature of experience itself, and its rhetorical nature when it sets to propagate (observe the trials by media). Thus experience only provides the sphere for exercise of the absolute will, but not its establishment. Thirdly and most importantly, laws created from a posteriori retrospection only reinforces wants and inclination, and thus temporal. Rarely does it yields to a temperance will, but only to a satisfaction of current mores and wiles. The replication of a posteriori will moves and satisfies the common laws of instinct, but not enough to yield to an absolute will. It is thus why the lingering aftertaste after hearing an ultimatum from a judge whose judgment would always be ad hoc (as it does not rise from a priori principle, but mere stopgap). An absolute law, when is explicated accurately, would create a harmony, just like a firm knock to the nail reinforces the structure, not merely holding it together. It must arise from a priori rational framework of reason, for which all sane man would arrive naturally via deliberation, not via nodding to temporal wants. And this maxim would automatically lay hold to all men in whatever time and conditions and cultures, found not in specific conditions but in the very condition of reasoning itself. A law that absolute would bind one and others universally for the sake of itself, not as means for anything else. It acts as the very condition of practical acts, not as an effect from acts. Thus the maxim of practical philosophy is to act as you would to others as you would others to you, and for this maxim sake itself. Thus the maxim lies solely in a priori, not abstraction from the empirical. The maxim could be broken down to the concept of justice, which is the realization of the will to the truth that everything in the world is related to each other in a complex web of meaning, and this web of meaning possessed its own ontological correct positions; thus justice. While the maxim is necessarily the Good, but the will could still be insufficiently determined to it, due to personal inclinations. The Good thus emerged in this world of contingency by the name of Imperative; of things that “ought”. Will is the faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with representation of certain law. Subjective basis of desire is desire while objective basis of volition is motive. The material desires of man are all relative, for it is only upon their relation to the object that gives them the worth; thus unable to furnish principles which are universal and necessary. But, if there were something whose existence in itself has an absolute worth, a purpose in itself, this alone can be the source of categorical imperative. Man exists as a purpose on his own, not merely as a means to others, this the rational being itself must be regarded as a purpose. The supreme principle thus drawn from the representation of everyone which they are all a purpose in themselves. Thus always so act to treat humanity as a purpose and never merely as a means. And this is direct corollary to the categorical imperative: act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same tike will that it should become a universal law. Therefore, for example, suicide is wrong because it is using us as a means to escape deplorable conditions of life. A clear demonstration by Kant in this work. ...more |
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| 3.49
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| Jun 2012
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The Malay Annals narrated the epic mytho-historiography of the Malay peoples; from the origin of the royal houses to the demise of the Malay Malaccan
The Malay Annals narrated the epic mytho-historiography of the Malay peoples; from the origin of the royal houses to the demise of the Malay Malaccan Sultanate. I would like to derive some important anthropological appendix from my readings of this great work. The Malay peoples belong the linguistic family of Austronesia; whose people includes the aboriginal people of the Formosa in the north, to some isolated ethnicities in Madagascar to the West and to the lone island of Hawaii. 2 major theories proposed to delineate the origin of the Malay people. This is derived from the genetical and linguistic studies, rather than focusing on the cultural evolutions adopted by the Malays over time. It made no sense, for an instance, to declare the origin of the Malays to the Europeans, just because they submitted to the mentioned origins, just as it is absurd to derive the origins of the Malays to the Southern Dravidians, just because the transient empire of Chola launched a futile campaign to the Malay Archipelago. The first theory proposed that the Malay people originated from the aborigines of Formosa, who transplanted from their homeland by the encroaching Sino-Tibetan people from the mainlands. These people of Formosa spoke the tongue of primeval Austronesian, and embarked upon a remarkable exodus through the island chains of the Philippines, down to the island of Borneo and spread to the distant islands through their remarkable seafaring trees. Linguistics studies correlates with this theory, also the study on genetic locus. The second theory is more of a reaction against the recent assertion from local Indians of Malaysia, claiming that the people of Malays are also a newcomer, or the much controversial epithet "pendatang" to the lands of the Archipelago. Polemics created more polemics, and the Malays turned inward and proposed a new theory that refuted any external exodus into the Archipelago. According to the theory, when the first homo sapiens journeyed out from Africa, they transversed through Malay Archipelago and some of the group remained here, before further journeying through the Sundaland to the lands of Australia. It is from these original population, that the people of Malay are created, purely from local assimilation of these native populations. This theory, in summary, proposed a kind of sui generis origin of the Malay people, in contrast with out-of-Taiwan theory commonly believed previously. I of course believed that these 2 theories actually contributes to the whole picture of the situation. Both the African and Taiwan migrations contribute to the basic genetic profile of the Malay people. The original natives interacted with the new Austronesian newcomers; providing the Malays its diverse spectrum of appearances. As the Austronesian are more advanced culturally; it was they who instituted local rule and laws, and therefore becoming the masters of the land. But never did the newcomers forsake the aboriginal population. In the state of Negri Sembilan of Malaysia, for an instance, it is the descendants of the Semang and Jakun people who affirmed to be the "waris" people, or the "inheritors", from them arise 4 kinglets of the "Undangs", who would convene to select the new ruler of Negri Sembilan, the "Yamtuan Besar of Seri Menanti". The Yamtuans are the line of descendants of the Pagar Ruyong royalties invited by the local population to institute the rule of law in their lands, and to protect them from the ravaging of the Bugis and Makassar people. These symbiotic relationship exemplified between the waris and the Minangkabau newcomers are the perfect picture that the synergy between the old and the new. Only recent political polemics and greed of capitalism that tried to discard this primal fact. The application of the name Malay is complex, and have different scopes depending on the level of context we are using it. At the most constricted level, the Malay people are the ethnico-religious group of people under the rule of Federation of Malaysia. A Malay, as understood by the Constitution, is one that its primary constitutions to speak Malay (linguistically and genetically Austronesian, but the great family of Austronesian is bracketed only to include those within the national borders of Malaysia) and practises Islam. At a more general level, the Malay ethnic include the people under the jurisdiction of the Malaccan Sultanate, which again employs the ethnico-religious concept as above but also includes the people in Eastern and Southern Sumatra; the Palembangese, the Jambi, the Riau islanders to mention few. This definition of Malay made more sense if we are to speak in extra-national terms, i.e. in anthropological, cultural and historical sense. Nationalism and the Wilsonian concept of self-determination is a chimera that distorts too much of our history, as shown as the carnage it incited in the countries of Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Malay ethnic are exactly the umbrella of people that has been included to be under Sangsapurba's rule as mentioned in the Malay Annals. To put is simply, my thesis is that in a homogenous supra-ethnicity, what differs from one sub-ethnic to the other, is the one who employs one specific set of cultures than the other. The people of Archipelago should be called as the Nusantara people, instead of subjugating the people of Minangkabau, Acheh, Javanese under one forceful (and false) banner of the Malay. The definition of Malay only applies, at the most macro level, to the people who submitted under Sangsapurba's rule. The Nusantara people possessed brotherhood at the linguistic and genetic level, but not at the cultural level. It is a gross generalization to call each one of the ethnicities in the Archipelago as Malays. In a homogenous race, i.e. a group of people that possessed no real geographical barrier between them, thus maintaining the basic set of appearance (unfortunately this remains embedded in our psychic; the definition of race is simply a neurological construct that differentiated concrete physical differences between people), what differs between them are the cultural aspects practised by each of them. Cultural capital are transmissible rather than empty concept of race as understood as above. It is the cultural capitals that would be positively reinforced by the same group of people, generating a homogenity across generations, rather than mere appearances. And that explains why the Minangkabau are significantly superior in terms of education, the Acheh in their trading skills, to mention a few. It is because cultural capital that would persists, thus deserve the role of determining the definition between sub-ethnicities. This naturally raises the question about modern chimeras, the "landless cultural-adopters"; i.e. the people who behave and think like a culture different from their primary ones. Do they belong to the primary ones or the ones they trying to be? My answer would be the same: cultural capitals are infectious memes, it exerts inertia to any alien people under it. Of course the Malay individuals playing European, would not be an European it his/her lifetimes, but the inertia exerted by the Malay cultures in a Malay land would determine the patient's eventual determination. The person could either emigrate to the land of his/her choice, and their story could either end up to either assimilation or just an unfortunate miscarriage. Or if the person decided to stay and to withstand the pressure, they either would persists in rebellion, but as soon as their descendants escaped the pressure of the rebellion, they would assimilated to the parent culture. Chimeras don't define a thing; it is just a mere occasional statistical exception. Thus, I believe that it is the cultural capital that defines a group of people who geographically and linguistically homogenous. ...more |
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| Jan 01, 2005
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really liked it
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This book is one of Isutzu's cornerstone: an epic expanding on the works of Ibnu Arabi, especially in his magnum opus Fusus al-Hikam. Ibnu Arabi is one This book is one of Isutzu's cornerstone: an epic expanding on the works of Ibnu Arabi, especially in his magnum opus Fusus al-Hikam. Ibnu Arabi is one of the great physical that expounds the teaching of the Unity of Existence (wahdah al-wujud) into Islamic orthodoxy. While, of course, to say that that the orthodoxy fully accepted the idea is stretching too far. The ontological model would always be an uncomfortable fringe to many orthodox figures, for it is not that far from al-Asharite idea of "eternalness of substance" (in comparison to attributes), but the idea of Unity of Existence have too much of fringe of bombastic metaphors and also the cases of (misunderstood?) extremists such as al-Hallaj and other succumbed mystics. It took al-Attas to reformulate the idea in a more sober exposition, pulling it from the high heaven of similes to a robust digestible fact. The model, in my opinion, is the only robust ontological model that bypasses the jettison between two indubitable facts; of the Absoluteness of God and the existence of the world. Spinoza has answered the first in a more chimerical way in his monism; by concluding God is so Absolute that He also includes within Himself the attributes of extension. The latter part has been answered in its most extreme form by the heretical mystic sects that affirms gross materialism, or perhaps the Asharites and the philosophers, who in their sincere way to retain the transcendence of God, affirm the theory of eternalness of substance. This model has been expounded again and again somewhere in my reviews here, especially under al-Attas' "Degrees of Existence", al-Ghazzali's "Niche of Light" and Toshihko Isutzu's "Concept and Meaning of Existence". ...more |
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Apr 13, 2022
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Mar 27, 2022
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