On Sep 18, 2007, at 12:22 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
Ray;
With all due respect, quite a number of these "theories" are never
sufficiently credible to be properly called scientific in the first
place.
That's applying to-day's hindsight to the limited knowledge of
former
times.
Uh, no.
Velikovski's fundamental ignorance of Science from the 16th century
*on* is what made him so bafflingly ludicrous.
400 years of ignorance.
Judging the theories as not
credible even before the hypotheses have been tested is just as
unscientific as your characterisation of the proponents.
Science does not move forward every time somebody hypothesizes a new
kind of space turtle, or Atlas, by retesting 400 years of
experiments. Velikovski would have been a charlatan and a crank in
the 1800's, 1900's, and still is, to this very day.
"Brains falling out" is not scientific
language. A fair treatment of
Velikovsky's ideas is best done without preconceptions.
This is analogous to saying that "fair testing" requires *total*
ignorance of existing knowledge.
So, for the totally ignorant, I will grant that his ideas have merit.
This seems to be the case.
Space turtles for everybody!
Science is a process. We also do them a disservice
when we do not
give
them the opportunity to draw their own conclusions.
'Drawing one's own conclusions' is totally ignorant of the scientific
process.
Science isn't about about seeking an *individual's* conclusions.
That's Religion.
-Bop