[Phys-L] Re: THE WEDGE STRATEGY of The ID Movement

[jlu at HEP.ANL.GOV (Jack Uretsky)]

Hi all-


On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, John Clement wrote (in part):

> OTOH the city states in Italy and along the Dalmatian coast had extremely
> prosperous functioning republics while still being firmly Roman Catholic.

        In name, but not in practice.  The popes of the time were
blatantly non celibate.

> Venice was a republic and extremely prosperous at the same time.  The
> Venetians still resent being part of the rest of Italy and often long for
> the old republic.  Algebra was invented in an Islamist world.

        Algebraic questions go back to, at least the Egyptian priests of
the 15th century bce, instructing their students how to divide the beer
ration among the pyramid workers.  The use of symbols, in "word questions"
if that's what John means by algebra, is credited to the Persion
astronomer Omar Khayyam who was a rebellious Sufi, according to my sources.

        Newton's mathematices, and the calculus,leaned heavily upon the
work of Arhimedes, who, as far as I know, regularly sacrificed to Zeus, or
Athena, or Bacchus, or ..., who knows?

        So what, exactly, is the point being made here?
                                        Regards,
                                                Jack




--
"Trust me.  I have a lot of experience at this."
                General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
                just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley