Abstract

A thousand revolutions of the earth around the sun is but a brief time, given the presumed history of both the earth and solar system. Mentally and scientifically, however, we find this time span to be of enormous length without realizing how we in our minds and most of the inhabitants of the earth today in their way of living still remain in the world of a thousand years ago. Exploration then, as today, was a search for knowledge, for mastery of the earth’s resources, as well as a means of worshiping God’s Creation. I try in this brief presentation to explore what of the world of a thousand years ago remains our heritage today, both in our understanding of the world in which we live and of the questions we ask, and in the mental approach we use. We ask today the same questions, we have today the same disputes, and we travel the same age-old physical and mental routes. Although we may use different words, our modern approaches to the search for knowledge would contain few surprises to the scholars of a thousand years ago, although the results they might find both astounding and iniquitous.

pdf

Share