Addition of the "Lexicon" Feature of the Forum

    Today we have added the forum software's "Lexicon" feature as a means of addressing the ability to collaborate on pages which contain, for example, lists of the important passages on canonics, or ethics, or divinity, or the like.

    Rather than create a full wiki in separate software, choice of this option, at least in the beginning, allows us to leverage the existing user and permission system of the forum software so that those of us who are regular uses of the forum have seamless access to creating and editing pages.

    For those of you interested in helping with this organization, the software coders explain the capabilities of their software here. As of the writing of this post I have only begun to understand these capabilities, so if you see a feature in that article that does not appear to be implemented, please let me know. At this moment all I have set up are basic categories for Physics, Canonics, and Ethics, and under each of those categories I have added an article entitled, for example, "Canonics - List of Major Citations in Canonics." This would be the place where I would like us to collaborate to add the most important cites - we can paste the full cites into a list (with a citation to a source like Bailey, Exant Remains, Page XX) and add to it over time.

    The two examples of uses that prompted me to set this up are our recent discussions on "Canonics" and "Divinity." There are not a tremendous number of text references on these two topics, but we are constantly going hunting over again to find the main ones. This Lexicon feature should provide a good place where we can collaborate on adding to a single list, and creating a good reference list once and for all.

    Aside from the use to create "lists of citations" the feature is also intended to be used to create Wikipedia-like articles with hyperlinks that can be jointly edited by those with permission to do so.

    [Note 1: And that reminds me - everyone here at the forum with user level 3 or above should have editing privileges in the Lexicon. If you are a regular and/or wish to add to the wiki and don't have editing privileges, please let me know.]

    I will add to this opening post in the future.

    Until such time as we figure a better approach, let's use a format similar to this for posting citations:

    Citations Relevant to the Multivalent Approach / Multiple Possibilities / Waiting

    Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles, line 94 (translation by XXXX, add link or cite)

    The wanings of the moon and its subsequent waxings ..... may be explained in all the ways in which phenomena on earth invite us to such explanations of these phases, if only one does not fall in love with the method of a single explanation (μοναχῇ τρόπος ) and groundlessly

    disapproves of others, without having considered what it is possible for a human being to observe and what it is not and, for this reason, desirous of observing things that cannot be observed’.

    Epicurus, On Nature XI Ia11-19 (text and translation by Sedley, add link or cite)

    The sun, if we walk towards the place from which it appeared to us] to rise, directing ourselves up into the mainland zone, appears to us to set where we previously passed by, sometimes even when we have moved in all only a short distance. And this time we cannot blame it on the latitudinal movements. Why after all should you declare the measurement from here, or the one from here, or the one from here, or this one a more reliable guide of the risings and settings (of the sun)?’

    T3 Epicurus, On Nature XI IIa1 - 21 (text and translation by Sedley, add link or cite)

    They cannot hope] to form a [mental] model ([ὁ]μοίωμα) and to reason out (συλλογίζεσθαι) anything about these matters. For it seems to me that when they spend their time contriving some of them (I means their [ὄρ]γανα, instruments) and fooling around with others, it is no wonder, in view not only of the enslavements brought upon them by their doctrines but also (as far as concerns the appearances of the sun) of the indeterminacies (ἀοριστείας) of risings and settings, that they cannot form an adequate mental model by means of their instruments which

    produce no regularity. But their instruments are ...

    It is necessary for me or another administrator to add "Categories" and "Subcategories" to the master index of the Lexicon, but if you want another category just let me know.

    There is also a feature I have not implemented called "Custom Fields" and "Field Categories" which I have not read into the documentation far enough to understand yet. If you see a use for them before I do, let me know.