On Sep 23, 8:56*am, Paul Schlyter wrote:
On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:27:51 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc

wrote:
And this is what has Oriel so exercised. But then, he has told us
that
he is a Christian, and so why should I be surprised that he objects
to
what has been called a Faustian bargain - the one that led to the
"dark, Satanic mills" of the Industrial Revolution.

It's just weird that he uses the "dark Satanic mills", computers and
the Internet *(both products of the industrial revolution) to
propagate his ideas....

You are simply not good enough to make the distinction between
mechanical innovation as opposed to the great sciences which connect
astronomy to terrestrial sciences or solar system structure.Even when
timekeeping provided the resolution for measuring distances and
determining longitude on the surface of the planet,you are unable to
mesh the two in a belief that you can model planetary dynamics using
stellar circumpolar motion.Properly used,technological and mechanical
innovation is a brilliant aid to understanding astronomical and
terrestrial phenomena but unfortunately,as followers of Newton/
Flamsteed, your clockwork solar system based on Ra/Dec never worked.

William Blake understood the inhumanity and the cult ideologies that
bred it,the opportunistic attempt to hijack astronomy and apply
shortcuts and distortions for little more than intellectual pretense
but today it provides many of these followers with lifestyles and
reputations at the expense of the great astronomical heritage and the
wider community - an unthinking bunch who can't even keep one rotation
of the Earth in step with one 24 hour day -

"I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe
And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire
Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth
In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace."
Jerusalem

He was not the first nor the last to comment on the vicious strain of
empiricism that arose from trying to model planetary motions without
any care whatsoever and a conclusion plucked out of thin air.People
like Poe asked themselves how an accepted theory could answer so many
questions without even understanding where it came from but I assure
you and everyone else here than I know exactly where it came from and
why it is destructive in the extreme -

"To explain: — The Newtonian Gravity — a law of Nature — a law whose
existence as such no one out of Bedlam questions — a law whose
admission as such enables us to account for nine-tenths of the
Universal phænomena — a law which, merely because it does so enable us
to account for these phænomena, we are perfectly willing, without
reference to any other considerations, to admit, and cannot help
admitting, as a law — a law, nevertheless, of which neither the
principle nor the modus operandi of the principle, has ever yet been
traced by the human analysis — a law, in short, which, neither in its
detail nor in its generality, has been found susceptible of
explanation at all — is at length seen to be at every point thoroughly
explicable, provided we only yield our assent to —— what? To an
hypothesis? Why if an hypothesis — if the merest hypothesis — if an
hypothesis for whose assumption — as in the case of that pure
hypothesis the Newtonian law itself — no shadow of à priori reason
could be assigned — if an hypothesis, even so absolute as all this
implies, would enable us to perceive a principle for the Newtonian law
— would enable us to understand as satisfied, conditions so
miraculously — so ineffably complex and seemingly irreconcileable as
those involved in the relations of which Gravity tells us, — what
rational being could so expose his fatuity as to call even this
absolute hypothesis an hypothesis any longer — unless, indeed, he were
to persist in so calling it, with the understanding that he did so,
simply for the sake of consistency in words?" Allan Poe

The reasonable person accepts that technological innovation in all its
forms is separate to natural phenomena which links the celestial arena
with the terrestrial arena yet the vicious strain of empiricism tried
to muddy the distinction by asserting that mechanical experiments at a
human level are the same as dynamics art a planetary and solar system
level or the 'theory of gravity' as it is known.

The magnification enthusiasts have thrown their lot in with a bunch of
theorists who use the astronomical arena as a dumping ground for every
imaginative whim that enters their heads instead of using imaging to
clarify, and in some cases modify, the insights and methods of the
great astronomers.I have kept the issue of responsibility out of the
discussion as much as possible even though it looms in the background
as ultimately astronomy is an enjoyable pursuit in all its aspects and
only when it has come under an assault as it has from mathematical
theorists does responsibility to the past and the future enter the
picture.

I am proud of this era and its technological innovation and the
biggest user of imaging in this forum,what I am not proud of is the
utter contempt shown to astronomy and its relationship to terrestrial
sciences and it is not a popularity contest here,it is
talent,intelligence,effort,tenacity and all the better human traits
that will create the atmosphere for astronomy as an interpretative
science once more from a condition of unbridled speculative junk.