Subj : The universe
To   : BOB EYER
From : DAVE OLDRIDGE
Date : Tue Jan 09 2001 03:16 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is just not so--sadly.  Their activities and noises are one of the 
main reasons why evolutionary biology (and there really is no other 
kind, as biology becomes simply organic chemistry and taxonomy without 
evolution) is so poorly taught in many jurisdictions in the USA and Canada.  
And they have been influential in this regard as long as I can 
remember.

A lot of them crawled out from under their rocks when the USA improved 
its science education in response to the perceived threat from the 
Soviet missile and space programs.

---
 þ MM 1.1 #0357 þ Weather forecast for tonight: It's going to be dark!
 * Origin: FONiX Info Systems * Berkshire UK * +44 1344 641625 (2:252/171)

.