[Avodah] Secular knowledge

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Feb 02, 2011 at 05:08:26PM -0500, Hankman wrote:
: I think the more interesting question is: Are all things (Chachmos,
: ideas or logic) derived from Torah, themselves Torah? ...

Do we focus on the fact that the 6 qanim that emerge from the menorah
are distinct qanim, or that "mimenah yihyu"? We could actually ask a
parallel question about Shabbos -- today is Yom Shelishi *beShabbos*,
but certainly not Shabbos Qodesh.

At what point is a derivative a distinct thing?

RCM's question touches on a long email exchange RMShinnar and I had a
few months back. I mentioned that I personally was uncomfortable with
an understanding of a pasuq or any aggadic position that doesn't help
address some "internal" issue to the Torah. To my mind, if the Torah
is truly temimah, then every position should be able to grow out of
a need to answer a Torah question, or by implication from an already
stated opinion. RSM, OTOH, objected to this entire notion of internal
vs external material, since everything that exists is from HQBH, and
thus science is not less revelation. "Kikar zahav tahor ya'aseh osah".

The seven wisdoms referred to by the Maharsham cited in the devar
Torah that started this thread are the trivium (basic education, thus
the evolution to the word "trivial"):
    grammar, rhetoric and logic
and the quadrivium (higher education):
    arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy.
I get that not directly, but from R' Tzadoq (Peri Tzaddiq
<http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=22211&st=&pgnum=137> amudah
1). Rav Tzadoq clearly knew that the seven wisdoms he lists are a list
known from Greece.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "I hear, then I forget; I see, then I remember;
micha at aishdas.org        I do, then I understand." - Confucius
http://www.aishdas.org   "Hearing doesn't compare to seeing." - Mechilta
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