Re: Anachronisms in LOTR

"Douglas Eckhart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 
> "Stan Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>> Democritus was nearer right than his contemporaries, but I don't
>> think it's fair to say that modern science proved him correct.
>>
>> He was essentially guessing, just as his contemporaries were. The
>> big problem with Greek science is that nearly all of it was
>> guesses, with very little experiment to confirm or refute those
>> guesses. 
>>
>> Giving Democritus credit for being "correct" about atoms is
>> basically mistaking a coincidence for actual knowledge -- sort of
>> like that "Bible code" nonsense.
>> <http://www.math.temple.edu/~paulos/bibcodes.html>
>>
>> If you give Democritus credit for being "correct" about the
>> existence of atoms, then you also have to blame him for being
>> wrong about their shape, how they combine, how many different
>> kinds there were, and what internal structure they had.
> 
> More than 'probably'; the man was a genius, as were many of the
> great Greek philosophers

You mean that Democritus was a contrary so and so.  I have my 
suspicions that the Ancient Greeks were right about so many things 
simply because they couldn't bear to agree with each other, and thus 
came up with theories that spanned the whole spectrum of possibilities.  
In these circumstances, _someone_ is bound to strike lucky, as judged 
retrospectively.


-- 
Cheers, ymt.
Email to: jim dot laker one at btopenworld dot com