Astral Codex Ten

Greek miracle

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Greek miracle

Article

Greek miracle is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 14, 2023 and May 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “‘cause the “Greek miracle” — the advent of writing”; “the One Weird Trick behind the “Greek Miracle” around 500 BCE”. It most often appears alongside Egan, Eliezer, Erik Hoel.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: July 14, 2023
  • Last seen: May 30, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: The Educated Mind
July 14, 2023 · Original source
Literacy seems to be special — seems to open up the human capacity for decontextualized, abstract, logical thinking even when we’re not reading or writing. Q: So is that what caused the “Greek miracle” — the advent of writing? If the ability to write was all that it took, then we’d expect every literate person to be a near-genius. We might expect that the secret sauce is in the quick transition from the oral tradition to writing, but there have been many other groups who’ve learned to write with nary a trace of intellectual revolution.
There’s something missing… and Egan thinks we find it in the emotion-laden, unsystematic, wonder-struck kind of writing that he says spread through Greece in the early years of the Greek Miracle. This looks for all the world like a mash-up of Mythic and Philosophic understanding. It’s best exemplified, Egan writes, in The Histories, by Herodotus — a sort of “Guinness Book of Ancient World Records. But you don’t need to take Egan’s word for it — here’s the historian (and vampire novelist) Tom Holland, being interviewed by Tyler Cowen:
Inline links: being interviewed by Tyler Cowen
Bayes For Everyone
May 30, 2025 · Original source
And I think this is something worth working hard to achieve. According to the historian Reviel Netz, creating a stable culture like this was the One Weird Trick behind the “Greek Miracle” around 500 BCE. When this culture finally fizzled out, society reverted to valuing authority and uniformity. In the account of the historian and philosopher Michael Strevens, the Scientific Revolution was launched when thinkers found a new social practice that could gin up these cultural norms again. My hope is that by helping kids do Bayes’ theorem together — and starting with questions they’re actually excited about — can spark something similar in schools now.
Inline links: According to the historian Reviel Netz, the account of the historian and philosopher Michael Strevens