From: michael.huxley5@btinternet.com   
      
   "David Mitchell"  wrote in message   
   news:pan.2007.02.01.20.35.49.437900@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.   
      
   My point is that here we have seen extreme points of view trying to negate   
   each other. The logical versus the imaginative. Yes The Wright brothers were   
   poets. They saw the beauty of flight and tried, and succeeded, to fly,   
   themselves. In their poetry and their imagination, they proved that their   
   imagination, their flights of fancy, were real. The cold logical scientist,   
   the linear thinker just may not be capable of accepting that what is   
   currently deemed to be impossible or irrational could just become the future   
   reality. We must have the imaginative, the possibly ridiculous, so that we   
   can try to achieve it, often by trial and error. Saying that is it not   
   possible, out of hand, will MAKE it impossible, because we will give up   
   under the bombardment of negativity. If we say it COULD be possible, then we   
   will try until we KNOW one way or the other and move on. I have had very   
   many personal experiences which come under the heading of clairsentience and   
   can be dismissed as merely anecdotal (and, therefore, untrue?) but I , too,   
   find it offensive that what I have done and witnessed should be so   
   cavalierly dismissed. Discussion is good, but can become very corrosive   
   unless it is done iwth an open mind on bith sides.   
      
   MikeH   
      
   =======================================================================   
   > = David    --- If you use Microsoft products, you will, inevitably, get   
   > = Mitchell --- viruses, so please don't add me to your address book.   
   > =======================================================================   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)