Re: Theos-World RE: Dallas re references re footprints
Jun 17, 2003 03:07 PM
by Bart Lidofsky
dalval14@earthlink.net wrote:
Established academic Science tries to limit itself to the
theories made by its pioneers of 100 or more years ago and does
not fully recognize the advances made in certain areas, because
it upsets those.
Or, perhaps it discards theories that contradict physical evidence.
Science when it confines itself to the description of facts
cannot be challenged.
Yet, you try anyway.
Call it a series of educated guesses. But they are still
guesses.
A hypothesis is an educated guess. It becomes a theory when an
experiment can be designed which, if it fails, shows the theory to be
invalid. Note that, of course, if the experiment succeeds, that does not
necessarily validate the theory.
The "descent of man" is a crucial one. In the 1870/1880 period,
De Quatrefages demonstrated that the Man skeleton could not have
"descended" from that of an ape.
And can you give me a quote from somebody who said that men ARE
descended from apes, as opposed to men and apes having a common
ancestor? Also, please note that it is no longer the 19th century
(although far too many people calling themselves Theosophists refuse to
recognize this). DNA tracing has given us much better evidence than
anybody in the 19th century could have possibly had?
In the early 1900s Charles FORT wrote several books [THE BOOK OF
THE DAMNED, LO!, etc...] full of facts and reports taken from
observations on the spot and reported in local newspapers. These
were reports of strange phenomena all over the world, that
science neglected (or concealed),
Is your life in danger now from this conspiracy of concealment? If
science did conceal it, how did you find out?
In the early 1940s Immanuel Velikovsky wrote several books,
[WORLDS IN COLLISION, AGES IN CHAOS, Etc...] He was castigated
by the scientific community. Macmillans, the textbook publisher
originally was the publisher of those books. The Scientific
community in its wrath at being challenged and was forced to give
up publishing it under threat of being thereafter excommunicated
by the world of science and thus it would become unable to
publish scientific texts. There is a whole history of this
pressure available. Quite extraordinary. The findings and
objections of Velikovsky have never been completely and carefully
answered. Silence reigns.
I guess if a company publishes disprovable bullshit as science,
scientists wouldn't want to have that company as a publisher. Also, the
issue was NOT whether or not Velikovsky should be published, it was HOW
he was published. The scientific community objected it being published
as a textbook rather than as a pop science book. They did not want their
own works on the same level of the psychiatrist turned janitor who made
major scientific errors in his conjectures (and, with space probe
observations, turns out to be even MORE erroneous than originally
thought). Predictions made by his theories have either not come out, or
were both vague and obvious, allowing them to be twisted to fit facts
found later Out of all his predictions, a grand total of ONE came out
incontrovertibly true (the higher than expected temperature of Venus),
but even that was caused by factors NOT in his prediction.
Since then we have the author Von Danegan (spelling?) 1960/80,
who has written on a number of unexplained anomalies around the
world and illustrated them with photographs, dating, and other
pertinent data. Science was invited to explain these.
And they did. In detail. When his book was popular, I asked a number of
members of the faculty of Columbia University what they thought of his
book. They all gave pretty much the same answer: "A lot of what he says
makes sense, but in my field, he clearly has no idea what he's talking
about." Apparently, he hit on a LOT of scientific data where "common
sense" fails to match measured results.
More recently we have had John Anthony West publishing about The
Age of the Sphinx. said to be over 13,000 years old due to
erosion by water of the statue. Geologists support the evidence.
Not the overwhelming majority of them, who point out much more likely
reasons. When water is falling on your head outside, do you immediately
assume an alien is peeing on you?
Bart Lidofsky
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