From: david@edenroad.demon.co.uk   
      
   On Thu, 01 Feb 2007 17:31:34 +0000, MikeH wrote:   
      
   >   
   >> If you _can_ answer all of _those_ questions, I rather suspect you'll end   
   >> up with something very like the scientific method.  ;-)   
   >>   
   > At some time in our history, "Science" gave us a flat Earth,   
      
   Nope.  Eratosthenes calculated the radius of the Earth in (mumble) BC.   
      
   > Phlogiston and   
   > told us that heavier than air flight was impossible.   
      
   They were hypothesis which were disproved.  That's how science works.   
   It self-corrects.  No other system of discovering knowledge can make that   
   claim.   
      
   > Our poets and dreamers   
   > encouraged to see beyond mere evidence and we created the supposedly   
   > impossible.   
      
   Oh really?  So Wilbur and Orville Wright were poets?  Goddard was a poet?   
   Einstein was a poet?   
      
   I don't think so.   
      
   They may have been dreamers; but there's nothing to stop a scientist being   
   a dreamer; so what's your point?   
      
   > If we had waited for proof we would not have the many wonderful   
   > technologies that we have today. Open minds gave us the future and will   
   > continue to do so.   
      
   Open minds are not the exclusive province of poets and dreamers.  In fact,   
   I see more closed-mindedness in this newsgroups from the "mystical" side   
   of the fence than from the "scientists".  Scientists must, by definition,   
   allow empirical evidence to govern which theories they can accept.   
   Mystics have no such constraints.   
      
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