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

[Adrian Tymes]

--- 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.  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.

> 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".  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)?