"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness
I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
Yes, it would appear that he did, but let us not be hasty.
ReplyDeleteThat makes two of us, Gene! (Three if we count you.)
ReplyDeleteI was much more amused when I read the title of this post as a desperate imperative...
ReplyDeleteI think the guy who let me borrow the book said he liked it too, so that would make five of us.
ReplyDeleteWait...
The blogger guy, the lender guy, Bob, Gene, and me. I think I'm two of those guys, though. So, six.
Wait...
Yes, I should have posted "Someone Red My Novel!!!" for clarity.
ReplyDeleteAnd then you could have posted a follow-up making a snarky comment about your grammatical error!
ReplyDelete