Cut medieval astronomers some slack: not everyone can be a Hipparcus, a Ptolemy, a Brahe, a Kepler, a Herschel. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
Cut medieval astronomers some slack: not everyone can be a Hipparcus, a Ptolemy, a Brahe, a Kepler, a Herschel.
The way I always put it is that not everyone can build the cathedral, Some people have to build the scaffolding to help in the construction.
Science is a process of building explanations for how the world works. We often learn as much if not more from science that turns out to be wrong (not that the people who worked with epicycles were actually wrong, but that's a whole other barrel of fish) Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
