I'm reading with keen interest the arguments presented here about belief systems. My favourite educationalists, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, in their seminal book 'Teaching As A Subversive Activity' promote the argument that discovery comes not by design but largely by inquiry. They cite Galileo and Copernicus as two examples of scientists who challenged contemporary thinking and were roundly persecuted for it. Of course, now we know the earth is not the centre of the Universe, but such
It was, I believe, the painter John Ruskin who originally used the phrase. In his paper 'Modern Painters' (to the R.A. if I remember rightly) he stated that the meaning of pathetic fallacy was ''to signify any description of inanimate natural objects that ascribes to them human capabilities, sensations and emotions.'' He saw the pathetic fallacy as a scientific failing as he argued that art should be a truthful representation of the world as it appears to our senses, not as it appears to our ima
faith system Hi, Paul. I've got no strong opinion one way or another about Robert's methodology, but I don't think he's being immodest, malicious or inappropriately self-promoting :-he's being quite the opposite as I see it. Faith? I got out of bed this morning convinced that I would not die today - isn't that an act of faith, considering that many people in the same boat as myself are now dead? Arthur C. Clarke remarked that today's technology would be indistinguishable from magic to a pe
