From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihnp4!ihuxv!portegys
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: Re: Mystic-Scientists
Article-I.D.: ihuxv.435
Posted: Thu Jan 27 13:01:11 1983
Received: Sun Jan 30 06:16:24 1983
Reply-To: portegys@ihuxv.UUCP (Tom Portegys)

I personally do not like the tremendous distinction made between
"science", and "art" or "mysticism", etc.  I sometimes think this 
compulsion to see a black-and-white world without differences of 
degree is a disease of the human brain.  To be a scientist means
to hold to the scientific method, which, to be true, involves an
assumption on its own part, but is nevertheless a useful tool for
probing into the unknown, whatever that unknown may be.  This 
includes physics as well as parapsychology.  The scientific method
has nothing to say, good or bad, about things which are not within 
its domain of testability, such as belief in god or whatever.
It does not hold analysis higher than synthesis.  It is indifferent
to these things.  Some things are apples and oranges to each other.
So it is perfectly consistent to claim to be a scientist and a
blind believer in god. Good scientists can be good artists. Those
1950's SF movies, in which the "scientist" refuses to even enter-
tain the concept of ghosts, have done considerable damage.

            Tom Portegys, BTL IH, ...ihuxv!portegys