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katydee comments on Rationality Quotes May 2013 - Less Wrong
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-Marcus Aurelius
That's actually kind of sad. Hopefully times have changed since then.
It's my understanding that Marcus Aurelius no longer voices this opinion.
And the people who preserved his words to reach us were more like wise men who watched the skies and solved the puzzle of cheaply distributing text, than like emperors or philosophers.
Observing the sky is good and productive science. Perhaps he meant that as an emperor (or responsible senator, etc) he should not have been drawn into a serious scientific or philosophical career, but for those who can afford the time and effort, it's a fine pursuit.
I was told that that part was actually a reference to astrology.
Gasp, I definitely didn't read that way. Observing the sky sounded like science, and the logical puzzles sounded like math. Plus, it was already useful at the time: it helped keep track of time, predict seasons…
There's a bit in CS Lewis about modern people thinking of astrology and alchemy as the same sort of thing, but when they were current, astrology was a way of asserting an orderly universe while alchemy was asserting human power to make things very different.
Quite so-- and less obvious applications are evidenced by the example of Thales.