NPWittList(wassomethingPynchonrelatedatsomepointmaybe)

[Sojourner]

At 10:27 AM 8/13/97 -0700, David Casseres wrote:

>and Sojourner answers
>>Biggest science crank of all time: Aristotle.
>
>Not the same at all.  Aristotle did the bare-minimum requirement for 
>"science": he did a huge amount of *really hard work*, putting together a 
>systematic description of nature as it looked to thinking people at that 
>time.  Today's pseudo-scientists and cranks do not -- they put all their 
>effort into *publicizing* their descriptions.  The descriptions 
>themselves are easily seen to be the product of lazy minds that are not 
>concerned with accuracy, completeness, or consistency, only with 
>impressing as many people as possible.
>
>>And he was the biggest only because so many people followed his
>>teachings blindly.  Aristotle is a personal enemy of mine, but
>>that aside, it was blind assumption that a man, a human man,
>>knew more than you that lead to such dead-end beliefs.
>

Yes very true.  I guess what I meant to say was that I strongly
dislike the "Aristotle" that everybody but the physical person has
come to know, and yet I admire Aristotle the person just because
he did something, however wrong or incorrect or right or accurate
later generations hold his teachings to be.  

>If subsequent generations decided Aristotle had "finished" natural 
>science and they didn't need to do any work of their own, that is hardly 
>Aristotle's fault.  And in general, when I think about, say, physics, I 
>do believe Maxwell and Rutherford and Einstein and Feynman and Hawking 
>and Wheeler and Gribbin and all those guys knew/know a lot more than I 
>do, because I know they *did the work.*  If somebody shows up saying "oh, 
>well, you know, that relativity is just a cockeyed theory -- here's how 
>it really works," I want to see the calluses on his hands.
>

Amen.  Which isn't meant to be a religious statement, but rather
a shortened version of "Prithee, let me but share in thine wisdom".


*grin*

	"I eatuses my vegemals.. whah thah hail
	 do you tink des dam tings are?"

	   --1989 commercial for Pace salsa (unreleased)