Mombasa, a poem

Mombasa.
What can I say,
Your beaches golden as hay.

Corny.

Brazen by equatorial sun,
Unspoilt by the mess of the world.
Desolate from the Faranjee that come.

Who stay holed up by the pool bar.
Missive of the best of the World.
Golden beaches, palm shade, sun.

Warm Indian Ocean waters,
drenching your shores,
quenching our desire for more.

Sated, peaceful and calm.
Ready for the mess of the world.
But stay you aloof from it all.

Stay you, unspoilt.
Till I once again come.

Hustle, bustle.
Mombasa Town.
Kahwa on a street stall.

Narrow lanes,
Hidden industry.
Red sweet sticky halwa.

Birazee, mandazi too.
What can I say.
O Mombasa, I love you xxx.

Stay you, unspoilt.
Till I once again come.

END.
Written in the departures lounge of Mombasa's International Airport.
On request by my brother in law, Osman Varvani, for a poem about us.

We are Mombasa,
Mombasa is us.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Bamburi

Why the Greeks didn't do Science

The Greeks, for all their mental acumen and veritable gymnastics, never did Science!

Theirs was confined to a philosophical appreciation of the World. For whilst the story of Science, in the Western Hemisphere, nearly always starts with Galileo gazing up at the Heavens and finding there something that just neatly fit with his mathematical theory. 

The Greeks had looked there long before that and even formulated ideas that related to the World at large, and not just the Heavens above.

Their elemental philosophy was extremely powerful at explaining things. But the difference between our Science and theirs is not in explanatory power, but in ours being generative of still more questions and frontiers of endeavour.

Some may argue that Archimedes with his Eureka moment was the birth of Science as we know it. But the Archimedial principle of buoyancy was based upon the original four element theory. And more importantly whilst it explained, it did not generate.

For the Greeks held that the elements were four, with each seeking its natural place: AIR. FIRE. WATER. EARTH.

Earth sought earth, and things fell to the ground.
Water sought water, with rivers flowing into the sea.
Air sought air, with bubbles rising through fluids.
Fire sought the ephemeral fire of the Heavens, both causing devastation here on Earth and dissipating above.

And Archimedes's EUREKA was borne of his realisation that that seeking could also be a negative force of rejection. That the buoyancy that you experienced in a bath was a nett result of the water trying to reject you from its medium.
A perfect explanation if there ever was one.

Was it the power of this explanatory idea that held them back from further investigation?

Or was it that they lacked some other basic fundamental conception of the World?

Some have argued that they were too comfortable to do Science, too rich and too fat, but that belies the truth of their fragmentary states and politics, and does no justice to their brilliance.

Their explanatorily powerful elemental idea did fail them in one respect. For they held that a flying arrow, flew straight and then fell vertically once out of sight.

Indeed the Science of warfare should have been a pressing concern of theirs given their continually fluxing political situation. And even the Archimedean principle would have been employed to great effect in their construction of sea-faring vessels.

So what gave?
They would have noticed the imperfect parabolas of slower arrows. Then why not extrapolate from known to unknown as is the normal basis for all rational thought? From the parabolas that they saw to the parabolas that were out of sight?

But instead they resorted to their elemental theory and furthermore claimed a special case: that the slower arrows were imperfect, and the faster arrows perfect and so flew till their flying power was expended and then fell vertically.

The erroneousity of this may be easily apparent to us here and now, but imagining yourself within the powerful explanatory world view of the Greek elements and it is not so.

It would take something far stronger than the minds of brilliant men to give us Modern Science.

It took a conviction of a belief in the Universality of GOD given laws and their consistency.
And then an insistence that there are things worth researching and looking in to.

A revelation from GOD, the most High,

"and NO change will you find in the Sunnat-Ullah (Ways of GOD)".

"He Who created the seven heavens one above another: No want of proportion wilt thou see in the Creation of (Allah) Most Gracious. So turn thy vision again: seest thou any flaw?

Again turn thy vision a second time: (thy) vision will come back to thee dull and discomfited, in a state worn out."

From an Arabic Qu'ran that launched the whole of mankind on a path towards self betterment.
A fact little known.
Of a people now disdained.

END

Written on the flight out of Gatwick, over Africa onward to Mombasa.
Thank you Thompson Airlines for your hospitality.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Mombasa