Re: Body Temperature and Overreaction

H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
2 Nov 1995 22:27:24 -0500

Alex Duncan <aduncan@mail.utexas.edu> writes:

>>That was Darwin's problem and ignorance, not mine.
>>See my other posts.

>telling someone who's trying to repair the space shuttle to read a tinker
>toys manual written in a Japanese insane asylum. It may be instructive
>for one reason or another, but it sure won't tell you how to fix the
>shuttle.

NO. I don't see it that way. Nobody seriously reads Plato
or Aristotle to really learn something. It's probably done
for several reasons one of which is to show the brilliant
European civilization and its past, and the other to show
how stupid people were those days.

One does not read Aristotle to learn physics. Neither does
one read Newton to learn physics. Darwin's time is gone.
It's like asking economics students to read Adam Smith
or Marx. These days, through the generosity of their souls,
and because of habit, economists still call them economists
but "literary economists". That's one step away from
calling Jules Verne a physicist.

When the field becomes more developed Darwin will fade
into where he belongs. Marx will probably be called
an economics fiction writer, and Darwin a popularizer :-)..

-- 

Regards, Mark
http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey