Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 March 17

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March 17

Why did Latin lose its central role?

Why did Latin lose its central role as language of science? I understand that uneducated people wouldn't have any advantage learning it, and went on with their own version of Latin, be it Spanish or French. For educated people, however, it was an academic lingua franca. It was a huge advantage to learn it, and have access to all academia, literature and people.--Llaanngg (talk) 01:20, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

It fell out of fashion because people started writing in their own languages, just like Old Kingdom Egyptian was replaced by Middle Kingdom Egyptian and then by New Kingdom Egyptian, whilst Middle Kingdom Egyptian was retained for liturgical purposes, and then came Coptic (which is also used for liturgical purposes, as Egyptian Copts now speak Arabic). This is over a period of thousands of years, just has Latin has lost its central role over a period of thousands of years. It is still used occasionally for liturgical purposes, and for naming new animals and plants, and also in law (the odd phrase here and there), but has no other real function. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 02:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

A big step in the eventual demise of Latin was the transition from Latin to vernacular languages, commensurate with the protestant reformation. According to the Wikipedia article on vernacular "In religion, Protestantism was a driving force in the use of the vernacular in Christian Europe, the Bible being translated from Latin into vernacular languages..." At around the same time, even Catholic writers began using the vernacular for their writing; Galileo, for example, wrote in Italian. Dante Alighieri actually became a proponent of the vernacular several centuries before the Reformation. The Divine Comedy was written in Italian (and not Latin), and he wrote in favor of popular writing in local vernacular in his De vulgari eloquentia (somewhat ironically written in Latin). In English, vernacular writing is usually traced to Wycliffe's Bible (liturgical) and the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, both from the generation after Dante. --Jayron32 02:18, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Geopolitical factors play a role as well. Latin was replaced by French as the language of European diplomacy from the early 1700s, due to the political influence of France at the time. English became the dominant language of science, medicine and engineering by the late 1800s. It is no coincidence that this corresponded with both the peak of the British Empire, and the emergence of America as an industrial power and later as a scientific power. (English also replaced French as the language of diplomacy during the 20th century, chiefly because of the heavyweight influence of the post-WWII America.) Manning (talk) 03:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Capitalists

How do people become capitalists? Is it elected? Is it inherited? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.116.90 (talk) 03:33, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

See Capitalism for a general overview. The word actually has several different meanings. It can mean "someone who lives in, and participates, in a society with a capitalism-based political and economic system" or it can mean "someone who supports political policies that favor capitalism" or it can mean "Someone who has lots of money and invests in businesses, and thus participates in the processes of capital development." So, it depends on what you mean by "Capitalist" before we can tell you how you get to become one. The easiest way is to read Adam Smith and say "Yeah, that sounds right..." --Jayron32 03:36, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

By capitalists I mean businesspeople, industrialists and tycoons.

60.241.116.90 (talk) 00:21, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

They can either be born into old money and given their position through nepotism, or climb the corporate ladder. Now everybody's got advice they just keep on giving, doesn't mean too much to me. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:44, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Chaos is a ladder. Like Baelish here, it helps if you're a psychopath, or act like one. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:51, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

In many places it's relatively easy to start a business, irrespective of the level of economic development. As soon as you start your own business you're a businessman or businesswoman. However, to become a "capitalist" you need to live in a society that has developed its economy enough for some other things to have happened. In particular, you need to live in a society that has developed the idea of money, rather than just doing business using barter. This is because capitalism is, in large part, about the efficient use of idle resources, and we measure these resources using an arbitrary measure called money. What distinguishes a "capitalist" from a "non-capitalist" business is best described by an example.

Suppose you're a cobbler. You might make a pleasant living by bartering the shoes you make for food (to keep you alive) and for raw leather (to make more shoes). It's pretty obvious, though, that this business is really not very big, because you have to eat the food that people pay you with before it spoils. If you have a good year you might get fat, but you won't get rich, in the sense that you'll still have to worry about where lunch will be coming from next year. Now suppose you're living in a money economy: the bartering is replaced with coins, and now if you have a good year you have a bag of coins under your mattress. This bag of coins is your "capital" - the wealth you've accumulated, and which is currently sitting idle, waiting to be spent later.

Now suppose you live in a town where there are several other businesses - as well as you, there's a butcher, a baker and a candlestick-maker. You notice that when your town holds its spring fair there's always huge demand for shoes, so a month before the fair you take all the coins in your moneybag and buy as much raw leather as you can, and turn it all into shoes. After the fair you've made a good profit, but you notice that you could have sold even more shoes, if you'd had them. So the next year you go to the candlestick-maker a month before the spring fair. You know that the candlestick-maker does most business in winter, so by spring he's got a large bag of money, but he won't need to buy the pewter to make more candlesticks till autumn, so it's just sitting idle. So you say to the candlestick maker, "If you lend me twenty gold pieces so I can buy extra leather before the spring fair, I'll make a bunch of extra shoes and pay you back the twenty gold pieces with the extra profits I make." The candlestick-maker looks at you and says, "OK, I know you, and I know you're honest, but this seems a bit risky to me, because I don't know the shoe business, so I'll lend you the money, but because this is risky for me I need you to pay me back more than twenty gold pieces." So you haggle a bit, and eventually agree that you'll borrow twenty gold pieces, and when these are repaid you'll add on an extra five gold pieces for the candlestick-maker to compensate him for the risk that the plan might go wrong for some reason (this compensation is called "interest", because the candlestick-maker is now rather interested in how your business is doing, in a way that he wasn't before). And so we leave you, the night before the spring fair, with a whole bunch of extra shoes to sell. Will they all sell and leave you and the candlestick-maker with a profit? Or have you made too many, so you're left with unsold stock? That's part of another story. For now, focus on one thing: you're now a capitalist.

What has made you a capitalist is this: you've used someone else's money that would otherwise be sitting idle, and put it to work. Your business has used capital - stored economic value - and agreed a price for that capital (the interest of five gold pieces). You're no longer just a cobbler, you're also, in a small way, a dealer in money. To be a capitalist, rather than just a businessman, you must be making other people's capital work. A nice thing about this is that it improves the efficiency of the overall economy - resources that were just sitting doing nothing are now used to create extra goods for society (more people have shoes). You had to do extra work to make those extra shoes, but it was worth it because now you've made some extra profit. The candlestick-maker, too, is better off. Notice that although the candlestick-maker may look like he was doing nothing, he was really taking a risk. If your plans succeed, he does okay, but if your plans fail, he hasn't just lost money, he also has fewer resources to support his own business when the time comes to buy pewter to meet next winter's demand for candlesticks. He's also now a capitalist, by the way - like you, he's put to work capital that would otherwise sit idle, but in this case he's provided the funds, while you've used them. In autumn, when it's time to make candlesticks, the situation may reverse.

In short: to be a capitalist you need to be putting other people's money to work, and rewarding them for the use of their money, or you need to have some money, and be being rewarded by someone else who's borrowed it from you for a while. In either case, there are risks involved. Perhaps you'll make a profit, and become a cobbler-tycoon. Or perhaps your plans will go wrong, and you and the candlestick-maker will lose out. If this happens, of course, you can always mutter that famous consolation to yourself: "That's shoe business!" RomanSpa (talk) 10:51, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

RomanSpa, a friendly suggestion: that post would be a lot easier to read (and get more readers) if you put a space after each paragraph, and perhaps considered breaking some in two. I can't follow text like that. μηδείς (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind suggestion. RomanSpa (talk) 21:16, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah, so I see you've gone for the Maimonidean option. μηδείς (talk) 17:58, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm ashamed to say that I don't know the aphorism or event that you're referring to... RomanSpa (talk) 22:44, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

There was Maimonides, but I don't get it, either. As for the post, it was a bit blocky, but I liked the pun, too. Thanks for not burying it in the middle. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:59, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Maimonides wrote a book called the Guide for the Perplexed which he paradoxically began by saying he wasn't necessarily going to worry about making himself easy to understand. See wikiquote. I am, of course, being ironic, since Maimonides did actually put in paragraph breaks. μηδείς (talk) 19:02, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

RomanSpa, that's the best explanation of Capitalism I've ever read! And nice pun! 81.99.217.157 (talk) 22:34, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. It's an abbreviated version of a lecture I've given a couple of times. Glad you liked it. RomanSpa (talk) 10:12, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Once you've climbed the ladder, and there are no more rungs, you could just congratulate yourself on a job well done. But if you're the kind of person to ever stop climbing, you wouldn't be at the top. Thus, making one penny less than you did last year, regardless of your total, becomes a "crisis". To avoid it, and remain the King of Capitalism, you should legally justify robbing strangers.

You can charge them for being charged with a crime, for reporting a crime, for protecting their own money, for their parents dying or for looking suspiciously foreign. In the case of suspiciously foreign people, you can also force them into (something like) slavery.

Way easier and cheaper than doing the actual climbing yourself. But don't try it till you're "too big to fail", because then you'd be a criminal. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:41, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Percentage of the World's People who are Farmers

How many percent of the world's people are farmers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.116.90 (talk) 03:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

About one third of the world is engaged in agriculture. Incidentally, this was the very first hit when I typed "percentage of the world's population that are farmers" into Google. You can save yourself the step of having to ask people for help if you type your questions directly into Google. It's what nearly all people here will try first, and you'll save yourself time and others work if you try that first. --Jayron32 03:39, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Poor Farmers

In the past, most people were farmers. Farmers were poor. Why were most people farmers? Why were farmers poor? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.116.90 (talk) 03:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

See the above link. Even today, the most common means of employment in the entire world is subsistence farming, being the practice of growing enough food to feed your family, and that's it. That is, more people simply grow enough food to feed their family than do any other single job in the world. Prior to the 20th century, more people were engaged in subsistence farming than all other jobs put together. It isn't like people have complete freedom of choice to decide what they do. People do what they need to feed themselves and their children. For many people, dropping seeds into some dust and praying for rain is the only option. --Jayron32 03:42, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Farmers were often poor because their parents were, and they were born into serfdom. Rich people's parents had claimed the land first. When you grew up on a farm, before electrical waves started making furniture talk, you didn't really know you were poor, or at least couldn't grasp quite how poor you were. You might see the horse and clothes the landlord's collector rode in on, and realize they're shinier than yours, but that was about the extent of your marginalization. The rest of the time, you were as rich as your poor family was, so it's all relatively good.

Now and then, a priest or politician would come by with some amazingly vivid stories. Again, the airwaves weren't a thing yet, so stories were a lot more thrilling than we give them credit for today. Like today's shows make some think "Why can't I have golden hubcaps?", those shows made some think "Why can't I have my own stuff?", and peasants revolted, most notably in the Peasants' Revolt. That last wave is a pretty common line to draw between "in the past" and "lately". InedibleHulk (talk) 07:22, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

If the only method of farming is only sufficient to provide enough food for the farmers themselves, ("subsistance farming", as mentioned above), then everyone will have to be a farmer, and they won't be able to have anything other than what they make or grow themselves. (In other words, they will be poor). If farming produces slightly more than enough for the farmers themselves, then they can either eat more comfortably, trade the excess to non-farmers for other goods and services (tools, clothes, luxury goods, etc), take time off work to do other things, or a combination of all those. The more efficient farming becomes, the fewer people have to farm (and instead can make stuff for farmers, or each other), and the more "stuff" the farmers (and everyone else) can have (i.e. the less poor they are). Of course, that's the ideal situation where farmers are free and trade is on even terms. In the real world, you have parasites like bandits or nobles who cream off some/all of the excess, leaving the farmers poor even if they can make more than they need themselves. Then there's all sorts of issues with land ownership, control of trade, etc, which affects how much the farmers can produce and what they can trade it for, which may make them poorer (or alternativly, richer) than they would be in a "fair" system. (Of course, what counts as "fair" is very much open to debate - with a lot of people defining it essentaily as "whatever would advantage people like me") Iapetus (talk) 12:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

World's oldest bureaucracy

Would it be accurate to say that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are the world's oldest continuously-existing bureaucracies? --203.79.110.120 (talk) 06:41, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Those two aren't in full communion, so you'd have to pick one or the other after the Great Schism. Both organizations have changed their rules in major ways over the years, so it's not quite right to say their bureacracies have continuously existed. As you go further down each hierarchy, the rules are even less unanimous. How it works in one town isn't necessarily the way it goes in the next.

But yeah, they're definitely contenders. China is another. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:39, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Not since 1948, when it became Communist. Everything changed then. I believe the OP is asking about the oldest continuously existing bureaucracies still in existence. I would think Iceland might be a contender. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 08:37, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

That was a weird year. The World Council of Churches sprung up, and the United Nations basically told the old world spider to clean out its desk.

I say "contender" instead of "champion" because of this. Change is the most continuous thing of all, and what exactly counts as the point of transformation depends on how you frame it.

Iceland's more undisputed, if you mean parliament by "bureacracy". It's been off-and-on-again with Denmark, though, and only off again (in a notarized and triplicated way) since 1944. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Anecdote alert: I used to have an Icelandic girlfriend and she said that many people there go bankrupt multiple times. Shortly after she went home, the entire country went bankrupt. However, it still maintains it's parliament, since viking times, though occasionally 'helped' by Denmark. I think it's called the 'Alþing', which is a direct translation of the Latin 'Res Publica'. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 21:17, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

You think? Have you ever heard of Wikipedia, where one can look up Althing?  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:53, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, Jack, I had never heard of Wikipedia before. I had to get it from the top of my head..... :) Thank you for the link. Actually I was in a hurry, to be honest. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 22:26, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I think integrae servandae holds the record for most understated change. Even those involved didn't know if they were still technically competent to ban books. Took seven months to be ecclesiastically positive. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:30, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Fun Fact: The concordat of Worms is called the Concordat of Worms. Beyond that, it's a very dry read. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

The University of Bologna (another fun name) goes back to Schism days, and is the oldest university. There too, of course, the rules have changed, but it's something. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:01, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

The Japanese monarchy purportedly goes back to 660 BC. 50.0.205.75 (talk) 17:26, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Venus of Tan-Tan

Is Venus of Tan-Tan the oldest artwork?--79.46.22.6 (talk) 11:23, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

If you mean by a human, and if a human made it, yes. But answers like that don't come easy hundreds of thousands of years later. I think we're stuck on maybe.

If you count non-humans, these psychedelic sponge etchings were done well before animals were supposed to exist.

If you count non-organic artists, here's a picture of the oldest anything ever. Trippy. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:06, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

We don't know. This and its pal the Venus of Berekhat Ram are basically pebbles that happen by chance to have a vaguely human shape to them. There are scratch markings that might or might not be attempts to enhance that shape, or they might just be scratches. There's a huge gap in time between these and the earliest definite art works. BTW, it's obviously not the oldest artifact. If you are going to use the word 'art' to refer to anything that has been made, there are a lot of flints. Paul B (talk) 12:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Note that a distinction should be made between "oldest artwork we know of" and "oldest artwork". Even if you say the Venus of Tan-Tan is a human made work of art, and even if you use a definition which excludes flints etc which might be primarily utilitarian in nature, you'd either have to come up with a very artificial definition, or have gotten very very lucky that we just happened to have found the real oldest work of art if it's something like Venus of Tan-Tan. Nil Einne (talk) 14:02, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

"Will the Christians allow us to make a Hanuman temple in the Vatican?"

Surendra Jain made some statements following the destruction of two churches in India and the gang rape of a nun, as described: [1][2] Though I know Vatican City is a very small "country" without much room, and one with an unusual theological structure, I do wonder: is the construction of some small thing qualifying as a Hanuman temple allowed, or has it even been done? After all, there are various interfaith things they do, and some of their workers and tourists might be non-Christian. One version of the statement seemed to use the word mandir, if that helps define the question - our articles focus on vast beautifully architected temples but unfortunately don't address what they look like when at their most rudimentary and rustic form. Wnt (talk) 12:58, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

The Vatican City is really a sui generis type of country. There has not, AFAIK, ever been any construction of any other religious buildings within the Vatican City territory. Part of the reason to understand why (besides the fact that it's controlled by the Catholic Church) is to really understand the size and scope of it. It has almost no official residents/citizens which aren't already Catholic Clergy, so there's no need to meet religious needs of anyone else. It's also fantastically small in area, when one hears things like "The smallest country in the world", people don't really grasp how small it is in terms of area, almost none of the "land" it controls (and has controlled since its creation in its current form) is open for development in any way: The entirety of the country is a handful of buildings and some connecting streets and public spaces. At best, one could envision perhaps building something in the Vatican Gardens, which is a green space that takes up about half of its territory, but fat chance of doing that; it isn't undeveloped wilderness, but a carefully manicured garden. All of Vatican City takes up an area of 44 hectares, or 110 acres. To give you an idea of that size, if you paced out a square a little more than 2000 feet on a side, that's about the size of the Vatican; you can cover the extreme points in a comfortable 5-10 minute stroll. There's just no where to build an actual non-Catholic religious building. When you visit Vatican City, you don't stay in Vatican city, you stay somewhere in the greater Rome area, and Rome has religious buildings for various faiths. Tourists and workers use those. Also, the very notion of India as a country which is historically non-Christian is laughable, it has had native Indian Christians for Almost 2000 years or quite literally almost longer than Rome itself has. Certainly longer than Christendom has used Rome as an official capital. --Jayron32 15:12, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

By contrast, the town of Bill, Wyoming, one of the tiniest communities in America, could contain multiple replicas of the entirety of Vatican City. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:12, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Theoretically, I suppose, maybe, at some point, it might be possible for an individual to erect a murti of Hanuman in a residence in the Vatican, if an individual already living there chose to do so in the place where they lived. And I think there may be, maybe, a few statues or murtis or other similar non-Christian objects of veneration or devotion somewhere in the Vatican already, like in the Vatican Library, which one might conceivably be able to pay homage or worship to within the Vatican City limits. But, I have to agree with the others, I have extremely serious problems seeing any of the limited space available in the Vatican, all of which is I think "owned" by the Catholic Church, being used to set up any sort of permanent non-Christian worship site. John Carter (talk) 16:56, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

A useful point of comparison:

• Rashtrapati Bhavan (official residence of President of India): 130 hectare
• Vatican City: 44 hectare

I'll let others come up with the, "If they won't let me do <blank> in Rashtrapati Bhavan, how can I..." analogies. Abecedare (talk) 17:13, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Given that they have a good sized garden at the Vatican, maybe the best bet would be to lobby for a bird house or bird feeder designed as a miniature version of the temple. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:16, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I should hasten to add, that size is just one issue. The comparison to a theocracy only makes sense if one presumes that India should be one. Does anyone know what the situation is in Iran, Saudi Arabia etc? Maybe VHP can use those for comparison next time. :-) Abecedare (talk) 17:20, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Christianity in Iran should help a bit; Christianity is not outlawed in Iran, though Christians can face persecution and social problems, as with religious or ethnic minorities in any country. Several denominations of Christianity have been active in Iran since before the beginnings of Islam, and there is also a small number of Evangelical Christians being recent converts to Western Protestant denominations. It's important to note that, comparatively speaking, especially in urban areas, Iran is much more liberal than many in the West imagine it to be. Saudi Arabia is a different story, see Christianity in Saudi Arabia. Officially, all residents and citizens of Saudi Arabia are automatically treated as Muslims under Saudi law, and permanent residents are subject to laws against apostasy for not adhering to Islam as a religion. For that reason, though there are more Christians in Saudi Arabia than in Iran (and given the population differences, that means Christians make up a larger proportion of Saudia Arabia's residents than it does Iran), open worship is not allowed in Saudi Arabia (in Iran, especially among traditional Iranian Christian denominations, there's some protection afforded by the government, and there are public worship sites). That means that one cannot actually find an actual Christian church building in Saudi Arabia (on can do so in Iran) and all worship occurs in private homes. Possessing, or even attempting to enter the country, in possession of a Bible is actually punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. Among majority Muslim states, Saudi Arabia is perhaps one of the more opressive regimes to live in for religious minorities, in the whole World. Far more so than Iran, which gets caricatured as such, but is far more liberal in its social situation. --Jayron32 19:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Iran was traditionally friendly with the west, and might have remained so had not Jimmy Carter foolishly embraced the deposed shah, triggering a nightmare relationship which persists to this day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:27, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

VHP would never stand up for Muslims, but Park 51 was pehaps the example they were looking for. Some recent events in both India and US have demonstrated how freedom of religion and expression, even in secular countries, can be held hostage to the sentiment of fringe right groups. Even the desecration, vandalism etc. have American parallels.[3] Amitrochates (talk) 09:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be a Hanuman temple in the Vatican, but there is a (small, portable) Vishnu one.[4] — Kpalion^(talk) 23:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)