In a message dated 7/6/02 4:14:24 AM GMT Daylight Time,
gmbbradford@netscape.net writes:
> SQUONKSTAIL wrote:
> "Also, it has been said that if the Nobel prize could be given
> posthumously, then Aristotle should get it for discovering DNA."
>
> According to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/her_ari.html
> "The Greek philosopher [Aristotle] correctly believed that both mother and
> father contribute biological material toward the creation of offspring, but
> he was mistakenly convinced that a child is the product of his or her
> parents' commingled blood. Semen, Aristotle held, was a man's purified
> blood, which could engender a child when coupled with menstrual blood
> inside a woman's body."
>
> Aristotle said nothing about DNA or its structure, as far as I know, and
> as you can see from the paragraph above, made a very good guess for his
> time about how sex worked, but got it wrong. This is hardly the standard
> by which we give out Nobel prizes today, but this is typical of the
> quality of Aristotle's output for how the natural world worked.
>
> Some have said that William Sidis proposed the existence of black holes
> (on the basis of a startlingly liberal interpretation of a muddled
> cosmological essay he wrote) decades before the physics community did.
> Maybe we should also be giving him a posthumous Nobel, eh Squonkstail?
> Glenn
>
Hi Glenn,
First of all, Aristotle observed and drew his conclusions without much in the
way of experimental methodology.
His works are chock full of what now appear to be very silly explanations.
However, Aristotle's Form/matter teleology is exciting metabiology, and for
some, he provides a good foreshadow of a non-theistic explanation of how
biological organisms come to be.
I dislike gongs being handed out to the great and the good in recognition of
their achievements.
Of course, gong giving is a social pattern of value, so we may wish to
suggest that in a sense the activity is immoral if it dominates intellectual
patterns?
We may also wish to suggest that gong giving is good social quality if it
inspires those who pursue intellectual value?
I don't feel Sidis was at all interested in social quality from what i read
in Lila, and so he may not have even been bothered about receiving one when
he was alive?
(I watched an interview with David Bowie last night in which he was asked if
he would accept a Knighthood like Jagger has just done? Bowie indicated that
he was not at all interested.)
I have not read Sidis's work and so i cannot comment upon the quality of it.
I do not feel i have the sophistication to appreciate abstract physics over
and above contemporary physicists, so they are the ones who would be better
able to comment upon Sidis's work?
As far as Aristotle and a gong are concerned, apparently at least one
sophisticated biologist feels it was amusing, if nothing else, to suggest
giving him one?
(Ooooooo - eerrrrrrrrrrrrr madame! A gong i mean!)
(Have been trying to find the exact Nob prize reference but it will take a
little longer - i apologise.)
All the best,
Squonk.
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