--- Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> This is anachronistic no? Geocentrism was
> inherited from the ancient world and "empirical
> facts" as they relate to astronomy were of little
> concern in the middle ages. You are talking more
> about the early modern world.
>
[WS:] This is true. What I had in mind was the opposition to helliocentrism (Copernicn system) by the Catholic church on purely theological grounds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus).
I basically used it as an example of the stituation when political or ideological stakes to maintain a certain doctrine trump any empirical counter evidence.
I could have used religious opposition to evolution, or quote Lakatos's theory of scientific research programmes that pertains to the situation in question.
I used this theory as the basis of a critique of neoclassical economics http://www.springerlink.com/content/w52027l3h21205w7/fulltext.pdf
Wojtek
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