Thursday, February 27, 2020 11:37 AM
Science Debate (2020Feb27)
The debate over the shape of the Earth has been a reliable measure of a person’s intellect, since Ancient Greece, when one guy remarked, “All you have to do is, watch a ship sink beneath the horizon, its mast-top the last thing to disappear, to know that our Earth is shaped liked an orange.” For millennia, well-educated flat-earthers could point out that, “If the world was round, why don’t we all fall off?” Thank goodness for Isaac Newton.
Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. AD 100 – c. 170) was quite certain the Earth was the center of the Universe. He invented the Ptolemaic System, which explained how all the planets (& the Sun) revolved around the Earth. His planets stopped in orbit, occasionally, to do a little dance-orbit, then continue on their ‘big’ orbit. Ptolemy made an assumption—he was geocentric.
“Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” by Galileo (1632) explained that all the planets ran in smooth orbits (and so did we) around the Sun. He was tried for heresy by the Inquisition (No one ever expects that, right?) and kept under house arrest for the rest of his life. But since he was the ‘father’ of modern science, he just continued doing experimental research.
Therefore, it took 1,500 years for someone to correct Ptolemy’s assumption—and people were so used to it, they threw the ‘snowflake’ in jail for life. Fortunately, the scientists that grew out of the Renaissance were more receptive to Galileo’s math… although the Vatican did issue an apology to Galileo, about ten years ago, or so.
Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939) would invent psychoanalysis, but he would wrap it up in his own emotional issues, using his assumption of male chauvinism as a given, rather than an artificial overlay on society. This assumption made Freud’s work an amalgam of his study of the mind, and the feelings of his heart—a mess that psychologists are still trying to straighten out, a century later. Freud made an assumption—he thought everyone was like him, in ways he didn’t think of.
This is all by way of saying: Science is a slow grind—and people are its worst enemy. Galileo was also influential in separating the arts from the new, ‘reproducible’ sciences—and some people, including me, are still not sure if that was the right move…
But Science is beside the point.
We are faced with a psycho who believes that if he repeats a lie long enough, it will become true—and millions of people who are rooting for him to get away with it. Science will not help you here.
We are faced with a Republican Senate that admitted, sotto voce, ‘Yeah, he did it all—of course he did it all.’—and then acquitted—as if what he did was not treasonously criminal, clumsy, and unacceptable. It was acceptable to the Republican Senate and they said, “Forget it—we don’t care.”
If one single GOP Nazi Traitor remains in office after their 2020 elections, this country has entirely lost its way—like a cute, cartoon mouse with a thousand lawyers, or a Pussy-Grabber in the Oval Office. Where’s Galileo when you need him?