This is mostly confirmation bias. It's quite common to be 'kind of crazy', and it happens at all levels of intellect, from your working-class 'nutter' to your high-born 'eccentric'. There's nothing special about being smart when it comes to being 'kind of crazy'.
The Risk of Discovery
161–170 of 344 posts
Re: The Risk of Discovery
#162"Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time." I'm not sure which "us" pg is referring to, but the essay gives me the impression that he meant something like "most people" (I could be reading him wrong, but that was my impression). Alchemy is obviously a waste of time -- I won't dispute that, and I suspect that "most people" would agree with that assertion. Being…
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Re: The Risk of Discovery
#163"Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time." I'm not sure which "us" pg is referring to, but the essay gives me the impression that he meant something like "most people" (I could be reading him wrong, but that was my impression). Alchemy is obviously a waste of time -- I won't dispute that, and I suspect that "most people" would agree with that assertion. Being…
I'm just guessing here, but I suspect PG doesn't care what "most people" think about theology. He is probably writing from the perspective from an educated person who see the enormous influence of Newtonian physics, and see absolutely no benefit from his theological thinking. Seriously, who today even knows what Newtons theological theories were?
Re: The Risk of Discovery
#164When people say that Newton studied alchemy, what they actually mean was that he studied chemistry. He was studying what happens when you do different things to different elements. Sure he used the language of the time, but he was fundamentally doing chemistry. And the dream of the alchemists -- to turn base materials into gold -- was ultimately more or less realized when Henri Moissan created the first artificial di…
Even more realized in particle accelerators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#G...
Re: The Risk of Discovery
#165Loved the insight, but I don't agree with the conclusions. Maybe Newton was just genius all along, and we have yet to discover the "hugeness" of alchemy and theology.
I started typing out a comment but you said what I was trying to say in half as many words, thanks
Re: The Risk of Discovery
#166"Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time." I'm not sure which "us" pg is referring to, but the essay gives me the impression that he meant something like "most people" (I could be reading him wrong, but that was my impression). Alchemy is obviously a waste of time -- I won't dispute that, and I suspect that "most people" would agree with that assertion. Being…
Whatever you think of theology in general, here is the sort that Newton did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies#...
I think it's fair to say that Newton's work on it was a bet that paid off poorly.
Re: The Risk of Discovery
#167It's either ignorant or insulting to name theology in the same breath as alchemy. Theology is still an academic discipline and it doesn't even require a believe in the supernatural. Unless this is pg's attempt to insert himself into fight about "theology" vs. "religious studies".
Insulting to theology or to alchemy? Alchemy is basically chemistry done with a strong philosophical framework based in the thinking of Paracelsus and Hermes Trismegistos. "Making gold" is just a naive interpretation - it was research concerned about transformation of materials. When the underlying philosophy was abandoned it turned into modern chemistry. (The word "alchemy" has the same root as "chemistry".)
You can of course argue the underlying hermetic philosophy was BS - but it was and is no better or worse than theology.
Re: The Risk of Discovery
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
to use etymology: theology -> theism. It's the study of divine, god, etc. that sort of thing. It's not a normal scientific pursuit. Sure, it's still an academic discipline but not one with any scientific rigor or merit. To assert that its continued existence is what makes it more legitimate than alchemy is some mix of appeal to authority and appeal to popularity.
I'm going to disagree with the "or merit" part. For two reasons - the first being related to theology itself, and the other related to another field which is sometimes classified as being without scientific rigor - philosophy. One merit of theology is the study of religious traditions and whether or not they should continue or be discouraged for various reasons, as an example. Not only scientific pursuits have merit.…
Indeed, and thanks for the feedback, esp. in the form of pointing out the interpretation rather than assuming things or putting words in my mouth. I agree with everything you said. I think it would be good to make a distinction between the anthropology of religion and theology (the latter as the study of the "divine" itself, as though there's such a thing to study. Anthropology has merit for sure and even the practice of religion and even belief in things that aren't scientifically supported may have utility or purpose even if their premise is factually baseless (which isn't to say that everything lacking scientific evidence is necessarily false, just well, lacking scientific evidence).
Re: The Risk of Discovery
#169It's either ignorant or insulting to name theology in the same breath as alchemy. Theology is still an academic discipline and it doesn't even require a believe in the supernatural. Unless this is pg's attempt to insert himself into fight about "theology" vs. "religious studies".
Leaving aside alchemy, (which one can assume most people are fairly uninformed about), the whole notion that theology ought to be considered a waste of time in modern day belies a pretty surprising degree of ignorance. The study of God and religious ideas is equivalent to the study of human nature and the significance of existence itself. This is true regardless of which belief system you care to study. Even avoiding…
You're describing antrophology, not theology.
It's the difference between studying Tolkien universe as art and tracing its influences on culture etc on one hand, and searching for Silmarils on the other.
Re: The Risk of Discovery
#170I'm not sure that those lines of study were actually considered separate at the time. A century earlier than Newton's time, math and geometry were considered subfields of astronomy; and astronomy was considered the observation of the realm of the divine. Not only was there not a divide between physics and theology, people actually thought that math was a tool for studying theology (one of Copernicus' sources of incom…
Yes, Newton actually wanted to include "classical scholia" in the Principia showing that he was just recovering the occult knowledge of the ancients: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1984HisSc..22....1C
I don't know why he left them out -- I guess he knew it'd be controversial.