Posted by Tom on October 22, 1999 at 13:12:03:
In Reply to: Read the Book Tom: posted by Pat on October 22, 1999 at 07:09:31:
Tom: Certainly you're right so far as these passages would be read by someone who knows the philosophical source of the prejudice that Sagan is addressing here. Most readers would not. I certainly didn't at the time I first watched Cosmos. Certainly that won't shock you, since you already seem to think I'm intellectually challenged ; ) I did recognize the broader implication of what Sagan was saying about Kepler though-- that he was under the spell of medieval superstition until his brave refusal to dismiss the evidence brought him enlightenment.
But even if we construe this as an acknowledgment of Kepler's debt to Plato, it is a purely negative acknowledgment–one that would cause the naive reader to presume that Plato's influence on science was inhibitory. Part of what I'm saying is that Plato's work had a very positive impact upon the evolution of modern science. Sagan does not want to acknowledge this because of the close intellectual alliance that existed between Christianity and Platonic philosophy.