[extropy-chat] Bill Moyers' Comments - Global Environment CitizenAward

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jan 11, 2005, at 9:01 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote:

> --- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>> You don't
>> supplant prescientific myths by saying you have a
>> better form of the
>> same thing.
>
> You'd be surprised how often it works.
>
>> This would be equivalent to claiming
>> that chemistry was
>> actually modern alchemy
>
> It is, in fact.  Trace the history of chemistry: there
> is no question among serious historians that modern
> chemistry had its origins in alchemy.

Having origins in and being the same as are quite different things, yes?


>   Granted, there
> have been many many refinements and upgrades to the
> process over the centuries, such that we now refer to
> them by two different names, but it is technically
> correct to say that chemistry is modern alchemy.

No, it is not.  The purpose, not to mention the methodology and 
eschewing of mystical elements makes it very much not "modern alchemy".

>
>> and astronomy nothing but
>> scientific
>> astrology.
>
> True again - if by "scientific astrology" you include
> "attempting to find a scientific explanation for the
> patterns of the stars that were observed in
> astrology".

But finding a scientific explanation for astronomical events  is 
precisely what astrology was not about.   That they both look at the 
same objects does not remotely mean they are the same.

>   One could arguably fit all of astronomy's
> discoveries - including redshifts, black holes, dark
> matter theories, and so forth - under that defintion,
> for are they not all aspects of the fundamentals that
> our night sky revealed to ancient humans (even if many
> of the aspects themselves were undreamt of until
> recently)?
>

No.  Why attempt to twist yourself into a pretzel like this?

- samantha