On 29 Jun 2014, at 19:24, John Clark wrote:
> Why in hell do we keep talking about ancient ignoramuses like Plotinus and > the worst physicist who ever lived, Aristotle? > > Likewise why mention Galileo or Newton or Maxwell, when they've been shown to be wrong? Or Einstein or Heisenberg, since we know relativity and quantum mechanics are only approximations to some as yet unknown TOE? I think the answer is that you should give credit to whoever originated an idea, even if s/he only came up with an approximate version that was later refined (after all, the Ancient Greeks were *very *limited by the available technology, so merely having these ideas, with essentially no empirical support, wasn't bad going!). So "atoms and the void" (Democritus?) is a reasonable approximation to "primitive materialism" even now, and "the reflection of perfect forms" is a reasonable approximation to "It from Bit". -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
