Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
Llull's idea was to try something that was not based on the specific
beliefs of any one religion, but instead based only on whatever beliefs
or areas of knowledge all three religions had in common. For exam-
ple, all three religions supported the idea of there being only one God,
and no-one could deny that his own God possessed several positive at-
tributes: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth
and glory. All three religions also shared a common heritage of Greek
science, from which they knew that the Earth is at the centre of our
universe, with seven planets rotating around it, and that our planet is
composed of four elements: fire, earth, air and water. The philosophies
of all three religions were based on that of Aristotle. And all three were in
general agreement about what constituted virtues and what were vices.
Llull then set out to show how one could combine these theological,
scientific and moral components to produce arguments that at least could
not be rejected outright by his opponents. The components of these ar-
guments would be finite in number and clearly understood in very much
the same way that the components of arguments in formal logic are fi-
nite in number and are clearly understood by logicians. Each domain of
knowledge in Llull's system therefore involved a finite number of basic
principles, so that by creating the permutations of these basic princi-
ples in pairs, triples, and larger combinations, a list of the basic building
blocks for theological discourse could be assembled.
Llull's writings in his
Ars Magna (Great Art)
used geometrical dia-
grams and primitive logical devices to try to demonstrate the truths of
Christianity. He mechanized the process of forming these permutations
by constructing devices with two or more concentric discs, each list-
ing the basic principles around the circumference. The permutations
could then be formed by spinning the discs so as to line up different
permutations.
One such device was used for studying the divine attributes. Each
of its two discs contained the fourteen accepted attributes (goodness,
greatness, eternity, power, etc.), and the device allowed the user to create
the 196 (i.e., 14
×
14) permutations, for example
God is good and God is eternal
God is eternal and God is great
God is eternal and God is wise
