RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
October 23, 2021 at 9:23 am
(This post was last modified: October 23, 2021 at 9:24 am by polymath257.)
(October 21, 2021 at 7:43 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Wrong as they were, this IS the nub of understanding the world. "Things behave according to properties. Not the whims of the gods." It's hard for us moderners to recognize this, but the fact of "natural properties" is not included in the human mind from birth. It was hard won. Same thing with math. The ancient Egyptians and Sumerians used geometry for architecture and agriculture, but it was the Greeks who really concentrated on the theory of geometry. Not "geometry just to build this thing over here," but to essentially understand right triangles. Physics didn't fly out of Isaac Newton's ass. There is a line of succession: Galileo, Copernicus, you must include Ptolemy and Aristotle here, and even Thales belongs in this succession.
All too often, those who worked in the Middle Ages or in the Islamic lands are forgotten in this history. There was a LONG history of attempts to modify/understand Aristotle's ideas to explain, for example, the flight of an arrow. Eventually, that lead to the idea of inertia, which was fundamental to Galileo and Newton/
But, there is a question. How much of this history should a physicist know to be able to do physics? How much do the actual conclusions of the Oxford calculators impact the ideas we have today in physics?
And the frank answer is "not much". While they were absolutely essential to *getting to where we are*, their ideas and techniques have been supplanted and NONE of modern physics (anything past Newton) replies on their analyses. That is very different than the impact of Newton on the *current* ideas in physics.
So, Aristotle and Ptolemy, as well as Thomas Badwardine, are *historically* important, their ideas are NOT important for how modern physics actually approaches problems. Literally nothing in their analysis of physics remains in anything required in a modern physics class. But the ideas of Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, and others *are* relevant to our current understanding. These people were right in ways that previous thinkers were wrong.
So, yes, I agree, these lessons were hard fought. The insights of many people were required for us to get where we are today. They should be honored and studied for their *historical contributions*. But their ideas, outside of learning the history, can be safely ignored if all you want to do is understand physics.
Quote:Some of us are only interested in "the latest and greatest" of this succession of knowledge. And that's understandable. After all, why pay attention to a bunch of historical "wrong shit"? But there is also value in following our knowledge back to its roots. Some of us, like Neo (and myself), are very interested in that project. Socrates is an explosive figure in the succession of knowledge (as far as philosophy goes), and in the aftermath of Socrates, arose two towering figures: Plato and Aristotle. Just like Thales, it doesn't matter that these figures were wrong about a ton of shit. They were pivotal in improving human knowledge. And someone interested in how to get from ignorance to knowledge generally (aka philosophers) is going to be profoundly interested in these insightful thinkers.
And, believe it or not, some of their knowledge has yet to be improved upon and still holds up today. But (as I said before) that isn't what makes them important thinkers.
And I agree. I am very interested in the history of ideas. How did we get to the understanding we have today? That is a very interesting question to me. And to understand the progression of ideas can be a useful caution to taking our current ideas too seriously. But the *conclusions* of these thinkers is often, even usually *wrong*. And unless you want to investigate the history, their views can be safely ignored and should certainly NOT be part of the current debate about how things work.
I also think that *very* few of the ideas of Aristotle have stood up to the studies of the past 2000 years. Again, he was crucial to getting us on the right track, but his conclusions are almost universally wrong. He was a product of his time, with many of the biases and ignorance of that time. That is NOT saying he was not important historically.
But his ideas are NOT important for any modern analysis, I think.