Charles Brown wrote:
> >>> Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk 12/07/00 05:55PM >>>
>
> No you are absolutely wrong. Scientific facts are decided by material.
> Scientific consensus merely recognises that.
>
> The earth was not flat when scientists thought it was, it was round. The
> consensus caught up with the truth of the matter, it did not create it.
So it was Jim that made this remark. I wish people when quoting would identify who they are quoting. Surely no one on this list reads every post, and who says something is often part of its meaning.
I presume Jim is not as ignorant of history as this post suggests. But to repeat. Knowledge that the earth is round is probably older than anything we might call science. Only skeptics without any scientific training would ever have doubted that the earth was round.
Colombus, as I mentioned before, was wrong and the consensus of scientists in his time was correct about the earth's size. He was saved from death from thirst only because of the surprise of the western hemisphere. Usually skeptics from outside the consensus are wrong, and when they turn out to be "right" it is always on some such freakish accident as saved Colombus's skin. Real challenges to the consensus come from inside that consensus.
[Parallel: All corrections of errors by Marx or other marixts have come from Marxists, more or less inside the marxist consensus. Non-marxists when they discover a marxist error tend to replace that error with an even more egregious non-marxist error.]
Carrol