A tribute the man who may have made it all possible

[holmburgers]

I agree... except in terms of technology, we're no different than we were eons ago. I believe that technology gives us the illusion that we are more advanced, and indeed we've formalized so much more, but our base instincts and faculties have remained the same. We're not smarter, but our technology and organized civilization is such that we are bombarded from birth. That effect is the only thing that makes us different from people a million years earlier.... save maybe a handful of negligibly advantageous mutations

[ntenny]

Yes.
But's it's not that wrong at all to do so. Despite our optimistic view of ourselves, we have progressed very little since the earliest times we know of.

It sounds like you think you're disagreeing with me, but I don't get why. I'm certainly not saying "we got better".

But it's easier to see big patterns in How People Work when you're looking back on them from a few centuries later than it is in real time. So I don't have too much trouble believing that it took a while before anyone had the perspective to reify something that we'd recognise as "the scientific method", even though that person's predecessors had all the ingredients and were sort of doing the same thing.

I also think Aristotle couldn't falsify a hypothesis if it bit him on his pompous posterior, but I'm prepared to admit that this may not be a purely objective opinion. :-)

-NT

[Q.G.]

It sounds like you think you're disagreeing with me, but I don't get why. I'm certainly not saying "we got better".

I'm disagreeing with your historic perspective thing.
To exagerate only a bit: 2000 years ago is like yesterday.

I also think Aristotle couldn't falsify a hypothesis if it bit him on his pompous posterior, but I'm prepared to admit that this may not be a purely objective opinion. :-)

Pompous? The man who wrote (amongst lots of other stuff) the Topics?
The man who invented both the hypothesis, and the many ways to falsify just about anything?

You must think of someone else.
Or (switching from a disagreeing to a agreeing state of mind - don't know whether that would be more agreeable, but that's another matter): yes, that does sound very much like a purely objective opinion. (Or am i now disagreeing again? Hard, this...)