> First of all, emotionally satisfying metaphors can govern science as
> much as they do religion. If you look at contemporary science, this is
> not obvious; but if you look at science that is more and more removed
> in the past, it's clearly true.
Examples, please? If you mean really *far* in the past, one example might be Copernicus, who put the sun in the center of things because he was a sun-worshipper. But it's been a long time since science stopped working that way.
> As for religion, what you say is true for organized religion, which
> is what most people think any religion is or could be.
For the sake of the present discussion, by "religion" I mean what most people mean when they say "organized religion," since it's the religions organizations, especially certain Christian ones, that are politically important in the U.S. Meditation by individuals is significantly different from "organized religion," but it is not politically significant in the U.S. at this point.
> and argue that it was this mystical/meditation/practice based
> movement that actually laid the metaphysical foundations for modern
> science. (I think Cassirer partly argues this too.)
I don't know about that -- it might be true if science *had* metaphysical foundations, which it doesn't.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax