Every experiment can be extrapolated to outer space. When we send a man to the moon it is perfectly reasonable to assume that he sees what he believes and if he were on a distant planet he still would. By the same token all experiments in the lab can be assumed to apply everywhere.
I asked, "What are the experiments in astronomy?" And paleontology and anatomy, and exchemist added geology. I didn't see an answer there. This is the same problem we've been discussing - your lack of specifics. You generalize like this rendering your comment useless for further discussion on the topic.
Since you can't or won't address the questions asked with actual experiments (like I did with Newton and Galileo), there is nothing more to say except that you didn't make your case that "There can be no modern science outside experiment. By definition!" That comment was falsified with examples of observational sciences, and you came back with the above, which is not counter-rebuttal, but merely dissent and unsupported assertions of what you believe instead. That makes this subthread over according to academic standards of debate, where the last plausible, unrebutted claim stands while others fall. These are the values in peer review.
And these are the values in a courtroom. Suppose that the defense claims that pings from the defendant's phone off of a cell tower an hour away from the scene of the crime at the time of the crime exonerate him. Suppose the defense can't produce the records and wants hearsay admitted. The jury should acquit. But suppose those records are produced and can't be rebutted. Now, they should acquit. Suppose further that a photo of the driver driving his car in the area of the crime at the time of the crime were produced to impeach the ping data to indicate where the phone owner was when his phone was pinging in the next county - perhaps a traffic camera or a camera at a bridge crossing - now they convict again.
The last plausible, unrebutted claim carries the day if the jury is intelligent enough to understand and apply these principles. Right now, that's mine, that your definition of science is incorrect. This is the consequence of failing to rebut, and it's based in the idea that correct ideas cannot be successfully rebutted - you can't falsify a correct idea - so, ideas that cannot be successfully rebutted are provisionally considered correct until and unless they are falsified.
Reality occurs as a series of events unfolding from a continuing changing initial condition. The lack of understanding of these simple truisms is the greatest weakness in many many practitioners of reductionistic science and it is a first step toward reassembling reality from experiment.
When you make a criticism, you ought to identify a problem that you think justifies your criticism. What problem do you think that "lack of understanding" led to? Is it slowing up abiogenesis research? Is it causing satellites to crash to earth?
I'm really trying to get through to you, but I need your help. I need you to consider that my words might be valuable to you, and that you could benefit by being more specific following making broad claims, but you don't seem to be aware that that is what I want form you, or you are uninterested. Either way, an explicit statement affirming your position would be helpful - either you don't understand what is being requested, you were unaware anything was being requested, or you are aware and understand but choose to not cooperate.
This is what I call tapping the glass - experimenting with language trying to get through to others. I'm looking to see if there are any words I can write that will lead to you understanding me and trying to cooperate (I do not assume that you are trolling or being deliberately obstinate), or explaining why you won't. So far, I can't.
How could anyone start with any other opinion!!
Easily. If he is trained in critical thinking, he knows how to evaluate data dispassionately and open-mindedly.
We are taught from an early age that people used to be ignorant and superstitious but we're all better now.
Maybe, but you seem to think that once somebody has heard that idea, it becomes a permanent part of their thinking. If so, I disagree based in personal experience. Much of what I was told as a child and which was believed uncritically has been replaced by better ideas. That, too, is among the powers conferred by critical thought. Once one learns that skill, he spends the next part of his life reviewing what he believes and why he believes it. Isn't that why many of the denominations and their adherents don't want their children in public schools or going to universities? The often come home freethinkers.
Yes, you started reading all ancient literature with the belief that the authors were less evolved, less civilized, and less knowledgeable than almost anyone alive today but especially less than anyone who is educated.
Perhaps - I don't recall any more - but as I explained, my present position is based in critical analysis of the facts available. They were on average less evolved and less knowledgeable than the average Westerner. We see where modern thought began (ancient Greece), when the smartest Greeks were speculating about nature while the people around them were still sacrificing animals to imaginary gods and describing their problems in terms of punishment from a god, like the Tower of Babel story to which you so frequently refer, which explains existence of the family of mutually unintelligible languages in terms of sinning against an angry god. Most of us are much better informed than that now thanks to skepticism, empiricism, and modern scholarship.
And we see evidence of the (cultural) evolution of moral and intellectual development since, especially with the emergence of humanism as a social force. Many kings and dictators have being supplanted by democracies. The world is learning that slavery, misogyny, homophobia, and atheophobia are primitive, irrational thought, also thanks to the humanistic principles of tolerance and reason.
Humans are still conscious even today.
I doubt that anybody knows what you mean by that. You can't possibly mean what I would mean by that, which would be too trivial an observation to make.
Ancient people were as real as a heart attack
Or that. Once again, the apparent meaning is too trivial to mention. Of course they were real. And conscious. Nobody would dispute either of those as commonly understood, so I can't guess why you posted them.
Consciousness is largely subsumed by thought.
Or that, although this time, not because the apparent meaning seems trivial, but because I don't think anybody can paraphrase that into a meaningful and plausible sentence without injecting assumptions. I can't.
What I'd say instead is that consciousness is required for thought, not "subsumed" by it, whatever that means to you. In your opinion, does your comment contradict mine? Do you think it amplifies it?
