Subj : Re: The universe
To   : John Wilson
From : Bob Eyer
Date : Thu Jan 04 2001 02:38 am

BE:
-Well, science dispensed with final causes some hundreds of years
-ago when a lot of Aristotelian science was discredited.

>Mortimer J. Adler would fiercely argue against the use of the
>word *discredited*...

Well I've never read Mortimer Adler and probably won't have the
time to read him any time soon.  Perhaps you would like to share
with us your reading of his views for discussion purposes.

>
>But less that I wish, the "Yes or No" questions still exist...
>and amazingly enought more, it seems to me, in science, than in
>theology,

Well, this is obviously due to the fact that science is a study of
literal truth obtained from careful observation and analysis,
rather than a study of metaphors and moral tales.  The scientist
defines the fruitfulness of his inquiries in terms of the
interesting additional questions they raise.  Every answer is
supposed to generate a new question.  Further inquiry answers that
one, which raises yet another one, and so on.  This unending
dialectic is the cause and origin of scientific progress, and it
is much to be valued by us, because nearly all our welfare is
founded on it.

It is therefore quite easy to understand why more questions should
be raised in science than in theology.

BE:
-The only religionists who are going to attack
-science on the subject of evolution and cosmology are those who
-think the accounts in their religious texts, notably Genesis
-Chapters 1 and 2, are literally true

>I thought more than 60 years ago that these people were a dying
>lot, that this would soon no longer be true...
>
>One of the rare youthful thoughts I remember that has, sadly,
>proven not to be true.

Yeah, well they're still around, especially in the United States;
but they no longer have the power to hound scientists from their
academic chairs on investigations for heresy, as they once did.
They just make a lot of noise, and so no longer have a deleterious
impact on scientific practice or education.

Bob

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