On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 12:42 AM, LizR <[email protected]> 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? >
Because unlike Aristotle Newton and Maxwell could not be easily proven wrong even in their own time, and even today they are not wrong within their area of applicability, Maxwell's work is still valid provided things don't get too small, and things work fine for Newton if things don't move too fast or gravity gets too strong. And that is why we teach and will always continue to teach those theories in schools. But Aristotle's physical theories are and have always been completely worthless and the only place they should be taught is a course on the history of bad ideas. > Or Einstein or Heisenberg, since we know relativity and quantum mechanics > are only approximations to some as yet unknown TOE? > The trouble is that Aristotle's shallow ideas are not even approximately correct, they're just flat out wrong. > the Ancient Greeks were *very *limited by the available technology, > That is no excuse! The technology at the time was good enough to demonstrate that a heavy rock does not fall faster than a slightly lighter rock, and Aristotle was supposed to be a master of logic and should have realized from pure logic alone that contradictions followed from that idea. And I must say I think this ancestor worship for the ancient Greeks is downright unhealthy and the idea that they (or even some 18th century philosopher) could help us solve today's cutting edge scientific mysteries is just ridiculous. John K Clark -- 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.
