Psience Quest

Quote:Rolf Sattler is emeritus professor of biology at McGill University in Montrael, Canada. He is author of Organogenesis of Flowers, Biophilosophy: Analytic and Holistic Perspectives, and Science and Beyond: Toward Greater Sanity Through Science, Philosophy, Art, and Spirituality.

Here he describes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as the equivalent to German literature as Shakespeare is to English literature or Dante is to Italian literature – a towering figure. However, Goethe considered his scientific writings to be as important as his literary contributions. Sattler sees Goethe as one of the founders of the discipline of plant morphology. His book, The Metamorphosis of Plants was published in 1790. Sattler points out that Goethe incorporated many different worldviews into his analysis – including perspectivism, animism, mechanism, essentialism, holism, and mysticism.

Many people feel Goethe was one of the last ppl to lnow evrrything signigicant.   Today,
an expert knows very little compared to what science knows

(2021-10-21, 01:09 AM)entangled_cat Wrote: [ -> ]Many people feel Goethe was one of the last ppl to lnow evrrything signigicant.   Today,
an expert knows very little compared to what science knows

Well, we've been accumulating knowledge, information, art, literature, music at a vast rate. Who knows all of literature? Who knows all of music?

The phrase "science knows" is kind of empty rhetoric in that very few people grasp more than a small subset of that. The old joke goes, we study to know more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing.

(2021-10-21, 07:39 AM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]Well, we've been accumulating knowledge, information, art, literature, music at a vast rate. Who knows all of literature? Who knows all of music?

The phrase "science knows" is kind of empty rhetoric in that very few people grasp more than a small subset of that. The old joke goes, we study to know more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing.

I focused on science and implicitly math

The knowledge of literature has always been vast. It gets lost over time.

We are forced to trust reputible sources on questions that have been reasonably setyled