7:12 expensive uh we waste enormous amounts 7:14 of money on man space flight which have 7:17 has no uh scientific function 7:21 um I worry about that and maybe a more 7:26 important worry is whether or not um 7:30 the forces of uh religious 7:33 zealotry uh which are 7:36 uh so obvious in the Islamic world but 7:40 not entirely absent in the west uh will 7:44 lead to us turning away from science 7:47 because after all the Scientific 7:49 Revolution uhu of course did occur in 7:53 the uh 16th century and 17th century but 7:58 uh there had been a great period of 8:00 scientific Advance before that in 8:02 helenistic times which then came to an 8:05 end uh it was continued for a while in 8:08 the Arab world it disappeared in the 8:10 Christian world and then after the 13th 8:14 century it really uh did not pick up 8:17 again in any real way until the time of 8:20 Galileo uh we may not 8:23 continue with the great 8:26 um great tradition of science uh for 8:29 reasons which are even deeper and more 8:31 frightening than the lack of fundingWeinberg is putting a lot of blame on Christianity here. He praises ancient Greeks because they were pre-Christian, and Galileo because he had a dispute with the Pope.
Other people do say stuff like this, but I do not agree with it.
This "Scientific Revolution" took place in Christian Europe. The scientists were Christians, and acting under Christian sponsorship. Areas dominated by other religions did not make these scientific advances. Is that just a coincidence? I don't think so.
For all the crap about how the church tried to 'silence' Galileo, it wasn't the issue of how the solar system functioned, it was the matter of Galileo shooting off his mouth in an insulting manner against an authority figure publicly, which at the time was often grounds for execution or imprisonment. The fact of the matter is, Galileo went to a Catholic university where he learned about astronomical theories where the Earth wasn't the center of the universe, he didn't come up with the idea on his own, it just wasn't the approved doctrine approved by the church. Had Galileo not been so public with his disdain, he wouldn't have even been put on house arrest inside a lavish villa. Ah such cruel cruel punishment he suffered...sigh.
ReplyDeleteThings really haven't changed much in terms of challenging authority figures, as many who questioned if Covid 19 were a natural phenomena or an engineered disease were openly ridiculed and often punished, often by our own government. A certain political party was actually considering putting people in concentration camps for forced reeducation if they didn't agree with the so called 'consensus' science. How quickly the so called advocates for democracy forget their own autocratic impulses of yesterday.
Whenever the government tells you what your opinion is, raise your middle finger in salute to their overreach.