Posted by Tom on October 20, 1999 at 13:17:32:
In Reply to: Makes sense... posted by Pat on October 19, 1999 at 22:17:32:
Sagan's treatment of the origins of modern science is
based in the professional folklore of science rather than
in scholarly history. This folklore originated in the
Enlightenment when folks (the French philosophes mainly)had
an active interest in making science into a kind secular
papacy. To do so they had to revise the evolutionary
history of modern science in various ways to show that religion
was its natural enemy. Buying into this tradition,
Sagan perpetuates many common historical fallacies. The most remarkable of
these is his complete denigration of Plato and Arisotle as anti-scientific
philosophers. Historians know that the modern scientific revolution
resulted from modern elaboration and revision of Aristotelian notions
of science, not from its abandonments. Sagan's greatest scientific
hero of the 17th century is Johannes Kepler--who was a Platonist through
and through--but Sagan never acknowledges this. Instead he turns 17th-century
scientists into positivists. Like the enlightenment propagandists of the 18th century,
Sagan is forced to play down the influence of Platonic rationalism
on science because of its close association with religion--which he is so determined
to denigrate as anti-scientific.
Tom