I wonder if anyone has examined how close A physics is to
'intuitive' physics--or the sort I mentioned that could be
measured using reaction tests and the like.
> But I think the main reason is what you allude to above.
> The A's thought that nature could be understood through
> logic and reason alone (guided by the "scriptures",
> Aristotle's writings) without relying on vulgar experience.
Yeah. It seems like the big A himself, though, was more
experimental in attitude, wasn't he? (When it came to
botany, at least, if I remember correctly.)
[a good story]
> would not have gone after Galileo anyway. The commonly
> held view that the secular academics were innocent bystanders
> in the whole affair is, however, definitely a myth.
You mean 'secular' as in 'not paid by the church,' of course,
as "secular culture" was only faintly non-oxymoronic at that
point, right? But agreed--I haven't read a biography of
G, but enough to have seen that he wasn't adverse to his
reputation as the irritating upstart. :-)
-Greg