not many women have heard of hypatia so i thought id put this up for anyone interested,,
Who was Hypatia, and why should we remember her? What was her contribution to man/woman kind? Why was the beautiful woman murdered?
Hypatia of Alexandria
Hypatia was born in A.D. 370. She died either in the year of 415 or 430, depending on what book you read. Her father, Theon, was a mathematician and astronomer. He had told everyone that he could create the perfect human.
Not discouraged by Hypatia being born a girl, he continued on with his plan of creating the perfect human. He taught her in the subjects of art, literature, science, mathematics, and philosophy.
Back when Hypatia was alive, astronomy and astrology were the same thing; also, mathematics was used mostly for figuring out where a soul that was born under a certain planet would be at a certain time in the future. She was also taught to swim, row, ride horseback, and climb mountains.
By the time she was 21, she mastered rhetoric, which is the art of using speech effectively and persuasively. While she was growing up Hypatia spent a lot of time in a place called the Museum in the University of Alexandria.
Theon told Hypatia, "All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final. Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than to not think at all." By choosing not to believe in a religion, Hypatia had chosen her friends, her enemies, and eventually the way she died.
Hypatia was never married even though she had many proposals.
Since she passed her father's knowledge, he sent her to Athens. Historians do not know for sure how long she traveled, but after she finished her studies in Athens, she traveled throughout Europe. When she returned from her travels, she was invited to teach at the University. She taught geometry and astronomy. Her favorite subject was algebra, which was a new subject.
Imagine a time when the world's greatest living mathematician was a woman, indeed a physically beautiful woman, and a woman who was simultaneously the world's leading astronomer.
And imagine that she conducted her life and her professional work in a city as turbulent and troubled as Ayodhya or Amritsar, Belfast or Beirut is today.
And imagine such a female mathematician achieving fame not only in her specialist field, but also as a philosopher and religious thinker, who attracted a large popular following.
And imagine her as a virgin martyr killed, not for her Christianity, but by Christians because she was not one of them.
And imagine that the guilt of her death was widely whispered to lie at the door of one of Christianity's most honoured and significant saints.
Would we not expect to have heard of all this? Would it not be shouted from the rooftops? Would it not be possible to walk into any bookstore and buy a biography of this woman? Would not her life be common knowledge?
You would think so, but such is not the case. And that is the reason for this talk.
For Hypatia of Alexandria was indeed, at the time she was killed by Christian fanatics, the world's foremost mathematician and astronomer and also a leading neoplatonist philosopher.
Physically beautiful, devotedly celibate, she was the revered teacher of a man (Synesius of Cyrene) who, after his conversion to Christianity, helped formulate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, using neoplatonist principles learned at her feet.
By the late fourth century the Roman empire was divided and beset, officially Christian, but holding within its sway various others: Jews, heretical sects, diverse schools of neoplatonists and other assorted "pagans" and all of them at one another's throats. Alexandria in particular was seething with intercommunal rivalry and sectarian bitterness.
In either 391 or 392, the Christian archbishop, Theophilus, obtained imperial permission to raze to the ground the temple of Serapis, the particular deity of many Alexandrian pagans.
After a series of bloody battles, he succeeded in this aim and set out to establish on the site a church dedicated to St John the Baptist, of whose body he had custody of some alleged relics. One theory has it that this action also and finally put paid to the Museum and its once glorious library.
Christians fanatics
Hypatia was close to Orestes and there was a rumour that it was Hypatia's influence that prevented the Christian Orestes from accepting Cyril's spiritual direction and so becoming reconciled with his rival.
Moreover she was seen as one "devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, [who] beguiled many people through her satanic wiles, and the governor ... through her magic." That this was not in fact true is beside the point; it was believed and was bruited abroad.
So somewhat later, as Hypatia was returning home, she was set upon, torn from her carriage and dragged into a church, where she was stripped naked and fileted to death with roofing tiles, "and while she was still feebly twitching they beat her eyes out". They then orgiastically tore her body limb from limb, took her mangled remains out from the church, and burned them.
Hypatia wrote a commentary on the algebra book that was written by Diophantus. She constructed new problems for algebra and wrote a treatises on mathematics. Some these were called On the Astronomical Canon of Diophantus and Conics of Apollonius.
She and her father co-authored a commentary on Euclid's work. Hypatia wrote commentaries on Almagest. She also wrote instructions to build an astrolabe. An astrolabe is a navigational tool for sailors.
Hypatia also invented many things that have been un-changed, or changed just very slightly since their invention
As well as inventing the astrolabe she invented the planesphere. Both of these instruments are used for astronomy. A planesphere was a chart of stars and their movement across the sky. Hypatia invented an apparatus used to measure the level of water. Hypatia also invented the aerometer (or hydroscope), which determines the specific gravity of liquids.
To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing.
Hypatia also invented many useful objects
She was killed because they thought that she was a witch. A miinister led the mob to attack her, strip her, peel her skin with oyster shells and have her body burned.
The senseless murder of this beautiful learned soul of mathematics, science and philosophy, is alone, at least for me to hate Religion and especially the Holy mother of all harlotry, the Catholic church, which also set fire to the Library itself, where Hypatia worked. Destroying over 700,000 scrolls of ancient knowledge.
These two acts, the murder of Hypatia and the burning of the library are considered by many to be to greatest atrocities the world has ever known, for the knowledge contained on the scrolls in the library, is said to have contained mans/womans origins, cosmological truths and the greatest known knowledge concerning the Christian Coptics or Gnostics.
We cannot forget the Church and her followers, the fanatics they may have been, for these acts of barbarism. Religion breeds fanatics, it breeds intolerance, it breeds stupidity, it alone stands in the way of mans progress, both spiritually and scientifically.
(i didnt type this so forgive the authors dislike of religion lol)
Who was Hypatia, and why should we remember her? What was her contribution to man/woman kind? Why was the beautiful woman murdered?
Hypatia of Alexandria
Hypatia was born in A.D. 370. She died either in the year of 415 or 430, depending on what book you read. Her father, Theon, was a mathematician and astronomer. He had told everyone that he could create the perfect human.
Not discouraged by Hypatia being born a girl, he continued on with his plan of creating the perfect human. He taught her in the subjects of art, literature, science, mathematics, and philosophy.
Back when Hypatia was alive, astronomy and astrology were the same thing; also, mathematics was used mostly for figuring out where a soul that was born under a certain planet would be at a certain time in the future. She was also taught to swim, row, ride horseback, and climb mountains.
By the time she was 21, she mastered rhetoric, which is the art of using speech effectively and persuasively. While she was growing up Hypatia spent a lot of time in a place called the Museum in the University of Alexandria.
Theon told Hypatia, "All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final. Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than to not think at all." By choosing not to believe in a religion, Hypatia had chosen her friends, her enemies, and eventually the way she died.
Hypatia was never married even though she had many proposals.
Since she passed her father's knowledge, he sent her to Athens. Historians do not know for sure how long she traveled, but after she finished her studies in Athens, she traveled throughout Europe. When she returned from her travels, she was invited to teach at the University. She taught geometry and astronomy. Her favorite subject was algebra, which was a new subject.
Imagine a time when the world's greatest living mathematician was a woman, indeed a physically beautiful woman, and a woman who was simultaneously the world's leading astronomer.
And imagine that she conducted her life and her professional work in a city as turbulent and troubled as Ayodhya or Amritsar, Belfast or Beirut is today.
And imagine such a female mathematician achieving fame not only in her specialist field, but also as a philosopher and religious thinker, who attracted a large popular following.
And imagine her as a virgin martyr killed, not for her Christianity, but by Christians because she was not one of them.
And imagine that the guilt of her death was widely whispered to lie at the door of one of Christianity's most honoured and significant saints.
Would we not expect to have heard of all this? Would it not be shouted from the rooftops? Would it not be possible to walk into any bookstore and buy a biography of this woman? Would not her life be common knowledge?
You would think so, but such is not the case. And that is the reason for this talk.
For Hypatia of Alexandria was indeed, at the time she was killed by Christian fanatics, the world's foremost mathematician and astronomer and also a leading neoplatonist philosopher.
Physically beautiful, devotedly celibate, she was the revered teacher of a man (Synesius of Cyrene) who, after his conversion to Christianity, helped formulate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, using neoplatonist principles learned at her feet.
By the late fourth century the Roman empire was divided and beset, officially Christian, but holding within its sway various others: Jews, heretical sects, diverse schools of neoplatonists and other assorted "pagans" and all of them at one another's throats. Alexandria in particular was seething with intercommunal rivalry and sectarian bitterness.
In either 391 or 392, the Christian archbishop, Theophilus, obtained imperial permission to raze to the ground the temple of Serapis, the particular deity of many Alexandrian pagans.
After a series of bloody battles, he succeeded in this aim and set out to establish on the site a church dedicated to St John the Baptist, of whose body he had custody of some alleged relics. One theory has it that this action also and finally put paid to the Museum and its once glorious library.
Christians fanatics
Hypatia was close to Orestes and there was a rumour that it was Hypatia's influence that prevented the Christian Orestes from accepting Cyril's spiritual direction and so becoming reconciled with his rival.
Moreover she was seen as one "devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, [who] beguiled many people through her satanic wiles, and the governor ... through her magic." That this was not in fact true is beside the point; it was believed and was bruited abroad.
So somewhat later, as Hypatia was returning home, she was set upon, torn from her carriage and dragged into a church, where she was stripped naked and fileted to death with roofing tiles, "and while she was still feebly twitching they beat her eyes out". They then orgiastically tore her body limb from limb, took her mangled remains out from the church, and burned them.
Hypatia wrote a commentary on the algebra book that was written by Diophantus. She constructed new problems for algebra and wrote a treatises on mathematics. Some these were called On the Astronomical Canon of Diophantus and Conics of Apollonius.
She and her father co-authored a commentary on Euclid's work. Hypatia wrote commentaries on Almagest. She also wrote instructions to build an astrolabe. An astrolabe is a navigational tool for sailors.
Hypatia also invented many things that have been un-changed, or changed just very slightly since their invention
As well as inventing the astrolabe she invented the planesphere. Both of these instruments are used for astronomy. A planesphere was a chart of stars and their movement across the sky. Hypatia invented an apparatus used to measure the level of water. Hypatia also invented the aerometer (or hydroscope), which determines the specific gravity of liquids.
To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing.
Hypatia also invented many useful objects
She was killed because they thought that she was a witch. A miinister led the mob to attack her, strip her, peel her skin with oyster shells and have her body burned.
The senseless murder of this beautiful learned soul of mathematics, science and philosophy, is alone, at least for me to hate Religion and especially the Holy mother of all harlotry, the Catholic church, which also set fire to the Library itself, where Hypatia worked. Destroying over 700,000 scrolls of ancient knowledge.
These two acts, the murder of Hypatia and the burning of the library are considered by many to be to greatest atrocities the world has ever known, for the knowledge contained on the scrolls in the library, is said to have contained mans/womans origins, cosmological truths and the greatest known knowledge concerning the Christian Coptics or Gnostics.
We cannot forget the Church and her followers, the fanatics they may have been, for these acts of barbarism. Religion breeds fanatics, it breeds intolerance, it breeds stupidity, it alone stands in the way of mans progress, both spiritually and scientifically.
(i didnt type this so forgive the authors dislike of religion lol)
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