Delbert Grady writes:
quote:
One can know many things without science. people knew all about the sun and sky before science.
But the point is that they didn't. They believed the sun was the flaming chariot wheel of Apollo the sun-god, didn't they?
I know you don't claim to have read Dawkins's book (or any of his work), and other folks on this board and elsewhere have criticized Dawkins on the basis of someone else's review.
Unweaving the Rainbow is an amazing work that I highly recommend.
You would know this if you had read the book, but Dawkins's point is not that atheists understand science differently or more completely than believers. His argument is that science (and its naturalistic methodology) is traditionally regarded as taking the poetry and mystery out of life. The poet Keats criticized Newton for literally unweaving the rainbow, reducing a thing of beauty into mere wavelengths of light. Dawkins uses this image to make the point that Newton's work was the basis for advances in physics and cosmology which made our view of the universe much more astounding in its breadth and complexity. The expansion of our scientific knowledge always dispels long-held myths and offends those who cherish them, but it brings with it a renewed sense of wonder that is much more honest and healthy.
It's only through the limiting of individual perspective that we can achieve anything scientifically. Scientists can't use as evidence their "feeling" that certain variables may have an effect on the outcome of a controlled experiment. The factors are either verifiable and detectable or they don't belong in science. The science of statistics is used to counteract people's tendency to filter their experiences to arrive at whatever conclusions they desire. Science has only advanced by excluding the subjective, and for good reason.
I can't possibly recommend
Unweaving the Rainbow highly enough. I don't consider it an anti-religious polemic. It is based on the notions that the wonders of science are much more staggering than the myths they have replaced, that scientific methodology is necessarily naturalistic, and that an informed scientific imagination always has room for the poetic and the beautiful.
regards,
Esteban Hambre
This message has been edited by MrHambre, 12-01-2004 05:08 PM
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