Appreciate the Beauty of Wrong Ideas

Pinker tiresomely rehearses the familiar triumphalism of science over religion: �the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world�s traditional religions and cultures ... are factually mistaken.� So they are, there on the page; but most of the belief systems of all the world�s traditional religions and cultures have evolved in their factual understandings by means of intellectually responsible exegesis that takes the progress of science into account; and most of the belief systems of all the world�s traditional religions and cultures are not primarily traditions of fact but traditions of value; and the relationship of fact to value in those traditions is complicated enough to enable the values often to survive the facts, as they do also in Aeschylus and Plato and Ovid and Dante and Montaigne and Shakespeare. Is the beauty of ancient art nullified by the falsity of the cosmological ideas that inspired it? I would sooner bless the falsity for the beauty. Factual obsolescence is not philosophical or moral or cultural or spiritual obsolescence. Like many sophisticated people, Pinker is quite content with a collapse of sophistication in the discussion of religion.

Notes:

Argument that just because an idea is overcome by events, does not mean we cannot appreciate it for its elegance and beauty.

Folksonomies: beauty error argument wrong ideas

Taxonomies:
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/science/medicine/psychology and psychiatry (0.376191)
/technology and computing (0.292873)

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Entities:
Pinker tiresomely:Person (0.866299 (neutral:0.000000)), Ovid:Person (0.425152 (positive:0.067195)), triumphalism:Crime (0.390779 (negative:-0.439080)), Montaigne:Person (0.385678 (neutral:0.000000)), Dante:Person (0.357819 (neutral:0.000000))

Crimes Against Humanities Now science wants to invade the liberal arts. Don't let it happen.

Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article: Wieseltier, Leon (September 3, 2013), Crimes Against Humanities Now science wants to invade the liberal arts. Don't let it happen., New Republic, Retrieved on 2013-12-10

Source Material [www.newrepublic.com]

Folksonomies: science two cultures humanities

Triples

10 DEC 2013

Science and Religion

Why Science and Religion are Irreconcilable > Contrast > Appreciate the Beauty of Wrong Ideas
Irreconcilable, but that does not make one wrong?

Folksonomies: science religion

Schemas

18 MAY 2011

Living the Scientific Life

Habits, actions, and culture for living life like a scientist.

Folksonomies: enlightenment science humanism