[ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design.

Dan dan_ust at yahoo.com
Fri Jul 29 13:49:19 UTC 2011


Well, you seemed to be saying that slaves and artisans were consciously running experiments that Aristotle and others were ignoring from disdain. That would seem to mean, to me, that the experimental method was around long before the Middle Ages and that Aristotle and friends were just ignoring it because they were shackled to their aristocratic worldview.
 
Also, Aristotle, unlike the folks who supposedly wouldn't have looked in the telescope, wasn't a Christian and seemed to have been open to all sorts of other evidence -- even if, in hindsight, we might feel his rejections of certain ideas was ridiculous. This is what I get from reading him. I actually see him as more a synthetic thinker in many respects -- willing to look at the views of others on a topic in a way that many other types of thinkers wouldn't.
 
And as for Russell's comment, I'm not an Aristotle apologist, but I don't know that this is all that telling. Lots of people overlook things they shouldn't have. Recall the time I set up that 1.7 Gt device on Mount Asa and forgot the detonator! Aristotle did this too. But he also did make observations, such as the ones he made with chicken embryos. (Of coruse, the sad part was later thinkers, for the most part, didn't do much follow-up work to see where he got it wrong -- until, if memory serves, the 1700s.)
 
Regards,
 
Dan

From: Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 4:57 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design.

On 7/27/2011 2:44 PM, Dan wrote:

> I'm not a scholar of Aristotle, but I don't recall him rejecting
> experiment in his work.

He didn't have to *reject* it because it wasn't part of the Zeitgeist. The canonical Omg! wtf? example of error easily corrected by a moment's looking was his confident assertion that women have fewer teeth than men.

<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.
    Bertrand Russell, Impact of Science on Society (1952) ch. 1>

> I also don't think any thinker at his time was
> consciously putting forth the experimental method. Didn't that really
> have to wait until the Late Middle Ages?

That's exactly the point I was making.

> And whilst I don't want to defend Aristotle (or any thinker) too much,
> I'm guessing that were he shown some experiments or observations proving
> his ideas wrong in some of these areas, he probably would've changed his
> mind.

It depends how paradigm-offending/unthinkable the topic was. I have no doubt that in 100 years (or 2000 or whatever) routine scientists will accept evidence for some psi phenomena, but they sure as hell don't today even when it *is* shown to them. "Don't go there, look away, look away, some people will shout BULLSHIT and laugh at you and stop you getting funding in any other project that interests you."

Damien Broderick
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