Class Coments

• George comments that he hasn't read much ancient Greek literature and is not sure what to expect.
• I hear a little worry here: don't worry.
• Zach is interested to see how the discussion will work in this class.
• So am I: Jamie and I were the only ones who talked much this first time: apologies.
• Rachael Barney says that she was interested in the definition of "place" as space invested with meaning, and wants to learn more about its application to Greece.
• Geography is an interesting discipline, with its own bag of tricks, methods, and techniques. Prof. Bailly is constantly aware and worried that he's a Classicist, not a geographer.
• Rachael S is fascinated by the paucity of primary sources for Ancient Greece.
• Most cultures of that age suffer from the same situation. Do you think that people 3000 years from now will have all of the material we have?
• We've lost well over half of what was written in antiquity: I don't know the best guess, but it's obvious to me that we've lost something over 70%.
• Luke is interested in ways of investing meaning in spaces, such as 'haunted,' 'enchanted,' 'mythical.'
• Yes. We humans are meaning generators: we manufacture meaning and "give" it to things. But what is "meaning"? It seems like a simple concept, but it's not. Perhaps a first stab is to name a few synomyms: "importance," "significance," etc. Is all "meaning" relative in this geographical sense?
  
• I am reminded of a claim that I have often made: that there is no other natural resource other than human ingenuity. Nothing at all is a resource if some human doesn't consider it so. Thus we "make" things into resources: they aren't just "out there" as "resources."
  
• Paige wants to defend the claim that Herodotus is a "primary source."
• Well, I agree. But first, we have to agree on what "primary" in "primary source" means: if it means "the ultimate source of _____," then Herodotus is a primary source for many things that could fill in "______." But he is not always a reliable source or an accurate source or an unbiased source.
  
• Kaleb finds the class different than expected, so far, and looks forward to a different style of learning.
• Not sure what you had before, Kaleb. Hope not to disappoint.
• Rose is interested in how the Ancient Greeks are the origin of so many modern disciplines.
  
• It's a source of endless fascination for me. Most fascinating of all, to my mind, are the "presocratics," a group of thinkers who arguablly got the western intellect started.
• Chinundeh says that in Thailand, where he's from, his nickname is "friend," so we can call him that. 
• Can't resist: that's "friend-ly"! But I want to pronounce your name correctly anyway!
• Matthew is interested in how different cultures viewed "geography".
• Me too. It occurs to me that 'geography' didn't really exist in many cultures: if we ask, "how do other cultures view cutlery?" we can only talk about those who used implements for eating (not their hands), and maybe some of them don't consider "cutlery" the same as the implements they use. Not sure how to characterize my thought here.
• John looks forward to hearing more about the northern explorations of Pytheas.
• Rachel Byrd says she looks forward to how the class develops, although she is still shopping, it sounds like.
• Jenny wonders how we can collect primary sources of an oral culture?
• Good question: we can only ever freeze it: we can record it with audio, or transcribe it, but the "oral" part of it is hard to really capture: we are always already a literate culture and so must imagine ourself into an "oral culture" and how it views "sources." Perhaps the very notion of a "source" is problematic: as I understand it, the oral bards did not think that the epics ever changed, even from performance to performance. Of course, one could "prove" to them that they did, but I don't think they would be convinced.