Vatican astronomer on science

[mia1994]

The Link

 

[utexas_61]

i love the onion

 

[Statalyzer]

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[mia1994]

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[LonghornLawyer]

Okay. Maybe so. But the alchamy that was actively suppressed by the Church was the pursuit of a "philosopher's stone" that would turn lead and other similar metals into gold. And from that standpoint, it was a fraud and a sham at best, and at worst it often involved dabbles in the occult. It was ascientific and the playground of charlitans.

The search for metallic transmutation was as much a scientific pursuit as Mengele was a doctor. It was a perversion of science--not science itself. And the Church was not wrong for opposing it.

 

[mia1994]

LL, strictly speaking at that time science did not exist, and the transmutation of metals as they understood them was a fact. If you combined tin with copper in the proper quantity you get bronze a distinct metal which is harder than copper and more maliable than tin. If you sufficiently carbonized iron during smelting you made steel. What was lacking was not a moral compass but an understanding of the basic composition of the atomic structure. In any event, what resulted was a much deeper understanding of the world people lived in, and the very foundation of the practices and tools which are used in chemistry and metalurgy to this day.

Ingorance of the laws of nature does not make the enterprise a "sham", if we don't experiment we never learn.

 

[Statalyzer]

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[mia1994]

That might be true if astrology predated astronomy... or if the practice of astrology was based on an organized investagative method... but since neither of those statements are demonstrably true, I don't think the comparison is exactly on point.