My notes from Alioto emphasize the following:

a) the instrumentalist starting point of much of science

b) his account of "science" as a universal human activity

c) his connections between myth and mathematics, beginning with the observation that both involve abstractions from sense-experience - connections further fleshed out in his comparisons between

i) Egyptian myth (assuming an orderly nature) and use of mathematics, vs.

ii) Mesopotamian myth (assuming a disorderly nature) - coupled with an even more urgent need to be able to predict at least some events (at work in the Babylonian development of astronomy/astrology and the mathematical foundations for Thales' work).

All of which reinforces a central point:

d) the assumption of an orderly nature is just that - an assumption, even/especially today (his reference to Heisenberg and Bohr's discussion of quantum mechanics is especially interesting).

Points out the instrumentalist starting point: "But much scientific perception is attitudinal. Behind our manipulation of nature -- as behind earlier outlooks -- there exists a certain way of seeing the world, a particular perspective which molds nature into a specific form." (1)

Notes that "Most people probably equate the very idea of accumulating reliable knowledge with science." (1) And further comments on the [Piercian] view of science as progress, "...of assembling an ever-increasing volume of facts to support progressively superior theories and concepts. Further, the advance of technology and its apparent success in reshaping the world have led many to believe that, beneath it all, a true and real picture, a scientific mode of understanding, actually does exist. Earlier attempts to understand the world, now repudiated or superseded by modern developments, were "unscientific" or simply false." (2)

Against this Alioto urges a different paradigm -- one which defines science as an instrinsically and universally human activity:

Different ages have had different goals, have held different values, have asked different questions; their answers, their science, have assumed forms conditioned by, indeed dependent upon, these goals, values, and questions. The word science comes from the Latin scire, meaning to know or to understand, but knowledge can itself be understood and appreciated only within the culture which gives it birth. Science is a uniquely human creation tied to the emergence of culture....Given this process, no historical system can be labeled 'unscientific.' Because observational language itself may change with theory, and because a fact today may not be a fact tomorrow, every attempt to comrehend reality (the notion of 'reality' may itself be a very human assumption) is worthy of our appreciation; deserving of our respect, and entitled to the name science.(2)

Notes the parallel between myth and mathematics:

Modern science is often highly abstract. When viewed from the perspective of mathematical physics, for instance, the universe itself becomes abstract -- just as it becomes full of occult and supernatural forces when considered from the standpoint of myth. (2)

[On technology, symbol, culture, and science]:

Only, however, when technology merges with culture, when a formal thinking pattern mirrors a purposeful thinking process, does science exist. The development of stone tools points to something more than simple survival, and that something is the beginning of science.

Somewhere in those dim ages human beings began to think symbolically....

If this unique blend of imposing our symbols upon nature and transforming what we perceive accordingly is the hallmark of homo sapiens, we can thus assert that science has been around from the very beginning of the species. Of course, it was not our science, the science of the present. Nonetheless it greatly facilitated survival, because this ability to deal with thoughts and experiences symbolically has a tremendous liberating power. It breaks through the limitations of experience and forges a means of transcending time and passing down to future generations both the successes and failures of the present. (3)

Raises the interesting question: "What gave rise to this sense of order, this discovery of patterns which could be represented and communicated through symbolic thought?"

This is a question because, while nature is orderly, as Alioto points out (and as Boorstin will reiterate, using the regularity of astronomical phenomena as the primary example) -- nature is also disorderly.

Comments:

a) we see this diversity in the myths:

ORDERLY NATURE (Nile rising) --> Egyptian myth

[The flooding of the Nile is highly predictable, and as the source of life it resembles the cycle of birth and death. From these fundamental features of their country, it is probably that the Egyptians gained their strong sense of symmetry, balance, and geometry, perhaps best objectified by the great pyramids. (10)

MYTH: includes goddess elements (see Carmody & Carmody for more details), e.g.: the primordial waters are personified as the goddess Nun who gave birth to the Nile and upon whom floats the earth as a flat platter with a corrugated rim. "Nun was also the waters encircling the earth, like the Greek Okeanos, or the Great Circuit. Inside the platter is the flat plain of Egypt, and above the earth is the inverted pan of the sky, the goddess Nut crouching over the earth with fingers and toes touching the ground. Supporting her is Shu, the air-god." (10)

[But there is also a later, patriarchal myth supporting the power of mind: "creation begins with a thought in the heart of the god, and once he gives utterance to this idea, order is brought to the chaos. It is as if the idea precedes the act, and activity arises from cognition. Thus creation is continuous, for where there is thought and action the principle is present."]

MATHEMATICS: "Many historians believe that the Egyptians did not theorize upon the logical relationship of numbers. In the sense that they did not use mathematics to describe nature, this is probably true. But recent scholarship has shown that they did deduce mathematical relationships, and many of the operations they described in words can be transcribed into modern algebra, dealing with linear equations, second-degree equations, the sum of n terms of an arithmetical progression, and the like. Tied as we are to the logical proof of a problem expressed in symbols, we fail to see how one or two specific examples can constitute both a method and a proof. Our demand for proof is the result of a tradition arising from Greek geometry. For the Egyptians, on the other hand, the rigor was implied by the method." (10f)

TECHNOLOGY-MATHEMATICS: "The construction of the pyramids surely denotes some elementary knowledge of geometry. We know from their records that the scribes were able to compute the areas of triangles, trapezoids, and rectangles, as well as the area of a circle....[volume of a square pyramid; volume of a truncated pyramid; possibly Pythagorean theorem for a right -angled triangle]...We must conclude that, given the restrictions of their notation, the Egyptians achieved a relatively high level of sophistication in mathematics. Yet as a method for investigating nature, mathematics did not mean to them what it has meant to us since the days of Galileo. Their natural science was mythopoetical." (13)

DISORDERLY NATURE (Mesopotamia) --> Sumerian myth (Enuma Elish, Genesis)

-> especially the strong motif in Mesopotamian myth of identifying original chaos/evil with the feminine (Tiamat; the woman in the 2nd Genesis creation story);

In any case, Alioto emphasizes that "Such a cyclical pattern had human significance, especially in agricultural societies [emphasis mine]....[Because (next paragraph)]

Predictability of such meteorological events such as floods, seasons, and other changes was thus of great concern, given that human survival depended upon anticipating them. This led to the first astronomy and the use of numbers to calculate the positions of heavenly bodies, especially in Mesopotamia. Still, the need to predict such events carried an emotional and religious significance which cannot be separated from the practical. The harmony of celestial and earthly events represented a unity which resisted fragmentation. The planets were deities, and the heavens were sacred. Observation of the heavens was thus a religious occupation, and the first astronomers were priests. (7)

-> the identification of order/state/king/"scientist-priest" in agricultural/authoritarian societies, e.g.,

a) importance of regulating water in Mesopotamian city-states;

b) King as embodiment of Marduk, slayer of Tiamat

b) the assumption that nature is fundamentally orderly is precisely that -- an assumption:

Modern rational science assumes an order nonetheless, and when it is not apparent, still expects that it will reemerge shortly, once the problem is studied. Although nature may have given the initial impetus to search for order, at times it also defies humans to discover where the regularity lies....Heisenberg and Bohr often asked themselves if nature was as absurd as it seemed to be in their atomic experiments. [ref. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. 42.]