4 ms·
It's a little depressing to read how many harmful ideas he considered "almost died out" or even "officially died out" that still plague our society to this day,
by rcthompson 10y ago
It's a little depressing to read how many harmful ideas he considered "almost died out" or even "officially died out" that still plague our society to this day, 70 years later.
- Kenji 10y agoHey, look at the bright side. If you think in millenia, it wasn't too long ago that people had to fear that they were killed for outrageous ideas like that the planetary system could be heliocentric or that there are irrational numbers.
- Karunamon 10y agoGiordano Bruno was the person supposedly burned to death for heliocentrist views, in reality, that was more to do with his religious beliefs (pantheism, rejection of the Christian trinity, etc) than his views on how the stars are lined up. That one was easy to find on Google, but I'm unable to find an identity of any person who was burned at the stake for their views on mathematics. It's a common theme, but not one of the links on the first few pages were able to point to anything in specific (just lots of posts like this one that repeat the claim) Not that this absolves the early church of ideologically based murder or makes their actions less heinous, but in the interests of accuracy...
- Kenji 10y agoI applaud your intellectual rigour. You are right, it is not confirmed if someone really got murdered over irrational numbers (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus ). That is why I changed my comment right after I wrote it, to "fear that they were killed" instead of "have been killed". Let us not turn legends into facts.
- Floegipoky 10y agoI strongly suspect that the people burning other humans to death for witchcraft, based on red flags like literacy, may not have kept extensive records.