Re: Patriarchy: Re: What Matriarchy?
Paul Ciszek (pciszek@nyx10.cs.du.edu)
4 Aug 1996 18:35:32 -0600
"Marty G. Price" <mprice@Ra.MsState.Edu> writes:
>Sorry, Bryant, but even in the Western cultural context, you will find
>interpretations which vary enough from the ones you stated to allow the
>"social context" interpretation (which in malicious hands becomes "social
>bias"). For example, Aristotle's explanation for gravity ("things seek
>their own level") is very different from Newton's.
Aristotle's model of gravity was not only different from Newton's, it was
out-and-out WRONG, even by the standards of his own day. There were
contemporaries of Aristotle who knew that heavy things did not neccesarrily
fall faster than light things. They just didn't get revered by the ages.
It is possible (&
>easy --- we're not *that* far divorced from Aristotle's world) to envision
>a world order in which Aristotle's definition is significant & Newton's is
>silly, if not meaningless.
Such a world would be rather hard to envision, as falling objects would behave
very differently than they actually do; if we apply Aristotle's erroneous
model of gravity to everything from raindrops to the moon, I don't think the
result would be a world humans could live on.
>Gale
>(who once tested the law of gravitation by falling off a farmhouse roof.
>It worked. :) )
Not only does the law of gravitation work for skeptics, it works even for
non-sentients and inanimate objects incapable of having any opinions in the
matter.
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