Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Wild Moon<\/p>\n
As the Great Wheel turns, as the earth flies in its unimaginably long ellipse around the sun, we go on pretending in a terra-centric universe.\u00a0 The sun rises?\u00a0 The constellations rotate through the sky?\u00a0 The moon rises and sets?<\/p>\n
It’s no wonder the Catholic church was so reluctant to buy it.\u00a0 I mean, who was this guy Galileo and this other guy Copernicus compared to the Church Fathers?<\/p>\n
Woolly Buddy Tom Crane surprised me at our recent retreat on a matter related to this.\u00a0 I’d read a New Yorker article about the execution of a man in Texas convicted of arson in the death of his children.\u00a0 The point of the article was to demonstrate that an innocent man had died as a result of our use of capital punishment.\u00a0 It did this by using a renowned arson investigator who critiqued the arson investigators who sealed the man’s fate.\u00a0 (I just did a quick look and I can’t find the article right now.\u00a0 If I find it, I’ll post a link here.)<\/p>\n
Anyhow, I mentioned it to Tom, a forensic engineer, and he said, “Oh, yeah.\u00a0 Evidence-based science.\u00a0 That’s we talk about all the time.”\u00a0 He went on to say that it was a great tragedy.<\/p>\n
What struck me though was this notion of evidence-based science.\u00a0 My first reaction was, is there any other kind?\u00a0 Then, I realized:\u00a0 intelligent design, climate change deniers, any time ideology substitutes conviction for evidence, we risk non-evidence based science.<\/p>\n
It was Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum who made the wonderful analogy about method.\u00a0 If, he said, your method chose the wrong path for you on which to run, running faster would only take you further from your goal.\u00a0 He proposed that method was all and that the empirical method was the right one for science.\u00a0 This idea did not catch on overnight and there are still realms it has not penetrated, most notably of late of course, the GW Bush Whitehouse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Wild Moon As the Great Wheel turns, as the earth flies in its unimaginably long ellipse around the sun, we go on pretending in a terra-centric universe.\u00a0 The sun rises?\u00a0 The constellations rotate through the sky?\u00a0 The moon rises and sets? It’s no wonder the Catholic church was so reluctant to buy it.\u00a0 … Continue reading A Bit On Science<\/span>