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> The only time it really stops working is if people start treating it as doctrine, and demanding that you accept it on faith, and take any questions as evidenc

by cronix 5y ago

> The only time it really stops working is if people start treating it as doctrine, and demanding that you accept it on faith, and take any questions as evidence that you are an enemy of science. If anything destroys science, it is this line of reasoning. I wonder where we'd be today in science/physics if the Catholic Church (the authority of the day) was successful in stopping Galileo Galilei, in 1615, from "spreading misinformation/disinformation" that the Earth circled the sun, and pushing back against the prevailing "science" of the day. If he were alive in 2021 and pushing something that went against "current wisdom," of that magnitude, he would be banned from media, ridiculed, and cancelled. It was a lesson I had thought the West had learned. It appears not. Censor and treat science as a religion at your (our) own peril.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
Not being snarky, but it started with Aristarchus (his parallax work) and Ptolemy (the other one), so I'm pretty sure it would have continued in countries that weren't under Catholic oppression of science. Persia was pretty much the engine of science while Europe languished. To say this would not have progressed is to ignore the important work of non-European scientists.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Science actually progressed in Europe as well during the supposed dark ages. The whole notion that science just laid dormant between the fall of Rome and the renaissance is enlightenment-era propaganda that unfortunately has become part of the western cultural narrative. Ironically the notion of a Muslim golden age of free thought and science followed by a long dark age of no progress and oppression is also largely imagined.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    Correct. Which is why I said "languished", in comparison to what immediately followed with the Age of Enlightment, and what came before it, in Greece and the early Roman empire. It also is a bit of a misnomer to blame it all on religion, it was mostly just an assload of war.
plokiju 5y ago
> If he were alive in 2021 and pushing something that went against "current wisdom," of that magnitude, he would be banned from media, ridiculed, and cancelled. The problem is, for every Galileo who is thinking against the mainstream understanding and right, there are millions of others who are outside the mainstream and wrong. I don’t see how any society could function if it didn’t have a strict anti-bullshit filter, even if it may accidentally filter out geniuses who are ahead of their time.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  What's wrong with being wrong? If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that we are wrong about things, each and every one of us. We may be right about some things, but even those are for the most part incomplete truths.
  - plokiju 5y ago
    It’s ok to be wrong. But you should also expect that you may be ridiculed or ignored sometimes if your theories aren't conventional Basically, I don’t think the BBC refusing to give time to flat earth era is cancel culture. Even if there’s a non-zero chance they were right all along
    - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      Are the content teams at FAANG ridiculing and ignoring the people they consider to be wrong? Or are they going out of their way to censor perfectly legal and possibly correct things they just don’t like using an ever changing and intentionally ambiguous terms of service to do so? > Basically, I don’t think the BBC refusing to give time to flat earth era is cancel culture No one is making that argument. Talk about a Wuhan lab leak and see if it doesn’t get a lot harder to speak from your position.
      - mcguire 5y ago
        Do you have specific knowledge of a Wuhan lab leak? Are your arguments regarding a lab leak reasonable? Will you cease making your argument if it is not supported?
marcosdumay 5y ago
Just to point that the prevailing science of the day was completely divided between Earth and Heliocentrism, and the Church supported research of both sides. The Galileo story is a very nice tale of what happens when you mix science and politics.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ecshafer 5y ago
We would be exactly where we are since Galileo didn't do that much to prove the heliocentric model. Galileo also wasn't jailed for the heliocentric model, Galileo was jailed for writing a book, where The Pope was the stand in character for an idiot, overtly. And while we are more liberal, at the time insulting the pope in published material, in Italy, was a rather poor choice.
- bduerst 5y ago
  Yep. Galileo got himself into trouble not for his work on heliocentricity, but for publicly attacking an authority figure in the church. It's interesting to see how we today project our science/fundamentalism schism onto culture of the past, when in reality, there wasn't that much of a dichotomy before the Scopes trial in the 1930s.
  - theknocker 5y ago
    FYI you obviously know virtually nothing at all about Galileo.
- cronix 5y ago
  You are making a pedantic argument to a philosophical point. Extrapolate the concepts.

by cronix 5y ago

SavantIdiot 5y ago

Not being snarky, but it started with Aristarchus (his parallax work) and Ptolemy (the other one), so I'm pretty sure it would have continued in countries that weren't under Catholic oppression of science. Persia was pretty much the engine of science while Europe languished. To say this would not have progressed is to ignore the important work of non-European scientists.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
Science actually progressed in Europe as well during the supposed dark ages. The whole notion that science just laid dormant between the fall of Rome and the renaissance is enlightenment-era propaganda that unfortunately has become part of the western cultural narrative. Ironically the notion of a Muslim golden age of free thought and science followed by a long dark age of no progress and oppression is also largely imagined.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Correct. Which is why I said "languished", in comparison to what immediately followed with the Age of Enlightment, and what came before it, in Greece and the early Roman empire. It also is a bit of a misnomer to blame it all on religion, it was mostly just an assload of war.

plokiju 5y ago

> If he were alive in 2021 and pushing something that went against "current wisdom," of that magnitude, he would be banned from media, ridiculed, and cancelled. The problem is, for every Galileo who is thinking against the mainstream understanding and right, there are millions of others who are outside the mainstream and wrong. I don’t see how any society could function if it didn’t have a strict anti-bullshit filter, even if it may accidentally filter out geniuses who are ahead of their time.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
What's wrong with being wrong? If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that we are wrong about things, each and every one of us. We may be right about some things, but even those are for the most part incomplete truths.
- plokiju 5y ago
  It’s ok to be wrong. But you should also expect that you may be ridiculed or ignored sometimes if your theories aren't conventional Basically, I don’t think the BBC refusing to give time to flat earth era is cancel culture. Even if there’s a non-zero chance they were right all along
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Are the content teams at FAANG ridiculing and ignoring the people they consider to be wrong? Or are they going out of their way to censor perfectly legal and possibly correct things they just don’t like using an ever changing and intentionally ambiguous terms of service to do so? > Basically, I don’t think the BBC refusing to give time to flat earth era is cancel culture No one is making that argument. Talk about a Wuhan lab leak and see if it doesn’t get a lot harder to speak from your position.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      Do you have specific knowledge of a Wuhan lab leak? Are your arguments regarding a lab leak reasonable? Will you cease making your argument if it is not supported?

marcosdumay 5y ago

Just to point that the prevailing science of the day was completely divided between Earth and Heliocentrism, and the Church supported research of both sides. The Galileo story is a very nice tale of what happens when you mix science and politics.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ecshafer 5y ago

We would be exactly where we are since Galileo didn't do that much to prove the heliocentric model. Galileo also wasn't jailed for the heliocentric model, Galileo was jailed for writing a book, where The Pope was the stand in character for an idiot, overtly. And while we are more liberal, at the time insulting the pope in published material, in Italy, was a rather poor choice.

bduerst 5y ago
Yep. Galileo got himself into trouble not for his work on heliocentricity, but for publicly attacking an authority figure in the church. It's interesting to see how we today project our science/fundamentalism schism onto culture of the past, when in reality, there wasn't that much of a dichotomy before the Scopes trial in the 1930s.
- theknocker 5y ago
  FYI you obviously know virtually nothing at all about Galileo.
cronix 5y ago
You are making a pedantic argument to a philosophical point. Extrapolate the concepts.