On Tue, 1 Jul 1997 Mark Grant <mark@unicorn.com> Wrote:
>Wilson's main claim against Sagan appears to be that Sagan initially
>ranted against Velikovsky's ideas which were 'clearly' false,
Either Velikovsky's work is idiotic or the Scientific method is, there are
no other possibilities. I have a hunch it's Velikovsky.
>and then when many of those ideas turned out to be true Sagan
>adopted them as his own.
That I do not believe. Anybody who wanted to adopted Velikovsky's ideas as
his own is an idiot. Sagan was not an idiot.
>Personally I'm no fan of Sagan, given his love of
>politically-motivated science (e.g. 'Nuclear Winter').
The nuclear winter theory may or may not be true, but one thing is certain,
it has absolutely nothing to do with human political theories, it has to do
with the atmosphere. The atmosphere doesn't give a hoot in hell about
Liberals, Conservatives, Communists, Libertarians , Socialists or even
Extropians. The atmosphere is just interested in Thermodynamics.
If Dr. Sagan thought there was one chance in a thousand of being correct it
was his duty to shout it from the rooftops. If it turns out he was wrong
there is no disgrace in that, all the great scientists were wrong about
something important in their careers, its part of the Scientific method.
The great advantage Science has over other philosophies is that its self
correcting.
Robert Anton Wilson is sounding more and more like a fool to me.
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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