<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 12:02 PM, John Clark <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:johnkclark@gmail.com" target="_blank">johnkclark@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="">On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 11:52 AM, William Flynn Wallace <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com" target="_blank">foozler83@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><font size="4"><br></font><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:large"><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>Is there any reason to think that Aristotle/Bacon, many others, would not be hard-nosed scientists today? </span></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div></span><font size="4">Aristotle's theories could have been easily refuted even in his own day but nobody did<div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">,</div> including Aristotle. Aristotle was supposed to be a master of logic but when he applied it to physics the result was a complete muddle. Take his theory that heavy things fall faster than lighter ones, even if he was too lazy to perform the experiment he should have been able to figure out from pure logic alone that it can't be right because it leads to self contradiction. If you take a heavy rock and tie it to a slightly lighter rock with some string that has some slack in it and drop them then both rocks would fall slower than the big rock alone because the slower moving lighter rock would bog it down, but the tied together object would fall faster than the heavy rock because the new object is heavier than the heavy rock alone.</font><br><br><font size="4">Bertrand Russell didn't think much of Aristotle either, he said:<br><br>"Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths."</font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><font size="4"><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> John K Clark</div><br></font><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I recall a big meeting of philosophers somewhere around the 14th century. Issue: how many teeth does a horse have? Some wag suggested they get a horse and he was kicked out of the meeting: only rationalism can decide truth - like the Greeks did. Following the Greeks was apparently more like a religion.</div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">How in the world did humans get this far with this kind of behavior? </div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Or maybe the people who were not at the top actually ran the world according to a rough empiricism and observational learning, and tradition most of all.</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">What if Aristotle had looked in his wife's mouth and discovered empiricism? Where would we be now? Interesting alternative history fantasy.</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">bill w</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"></div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div>
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