From: José Raeiro (zeraeiro@clix.pt)
Date: Thu Apr 27 2006 - 18:45:05 MDT
In some cases they were just trying to improve those truths. For
example, Copernicus made his model because he was trying to improve the
ptolemaic cosmology. He was unhappy about the lack of uniformity in the
circular motion. Galileo didn't present any proof for his claims of the
Earth mobility. It was not the case of not following any book, neither
it was democratic, however, it was equally "wrong" in the method. Kepler
did arrive to his results, coincidental through errors in his
calculations. Just three main examples of the main characters in what
was perhaps the most important revolution in science. Were they more
awaken than those who arrive to the "truth" by the books or
"democratically"?
José Raeiro
Philip Goetz wrote:
> On 4/25/06, turin <turin@hell.com> wrote:
>
>> I haven't been keeping up but I'm responding to Jeff Albrights earlier discussion of objective and subjective values.
>>
>> The whole Enlightenment ideal was that eventually if you get enough people in the right place all talking together everyone could come to the "truth" or at least to an agreed upon solution to a set of goals which makes sense to everyone. That is a subtext for democracy in some places...
>>
>
> The Enlightenment could perhaps be better characterized in the
> opposite way. It occurred in the context of societies that believed
> they already knew all the important truths with absolute certainty.
> Enlightenment thinkers argued that the agreed-upon truths were often
> invalid. They did believe in truth, but they were fighting against
> two ways of arriving at truth - receiving it from a book, and arriving
> at it "democratically" (though they didn't use that word) via common
> consensus. They might even have said that a truth that everyone
> agreed on was inherently suspect.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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