"My argument" has nothing to do with the accumulated knowledge of "anthropologists" and "agriculturalists" - and everything to do with the ongoing severe abuse of science - and distortion of the scientific method - by the politically - and, yes, financially - motivated zealots. I have absolutely nothing against people who believe in global warming, global freezing, global steady-state forever - or in the second coming of Anubis, for that matter - free country. What bothers me is that way too many of them fake their weird religion as science - and way too many in the scientific establishment are going along with it - for most short-sighted and narrowly-selfish reasons
Actually,
your post has everything to do with the knowledge accumulated over a dozen different disciplines
including anthropology and agriculture. The days where sciences were kept in little boxes and separate from each other are long gone. Scientists from different fields have given validation to each others' work and global warming really is no exception.
Now, claiming that modern science and global warming are somehow a type of religion cheapens religion far more than it does science. There is nothing to gain spiritually for anybody who understands scientific principles. There is no dogma associated with science. There is not even a set of beliefs that are guaranteed to remain constant in every scenario. So how is it a religion? In which religions can centuries old principles change within the span of a year? In which religion can you question tenets proverbially set in stone? In what religion can a new theory to explain life's development supplant ideas held for 1000 or even 100 years? None because science is not a religion.
I'll give you this: We're making progress and I'm glad you stopped trying to claim that Copernicus' observations of the natural world are anywhere near the standards of proof required today. I'm even more glad that you've stopped trying to put natural philosophy in the same field as modern day science. I mean, if you actually knew what you were talking about, you'd know that not only is there no way Copernicus' work was attacked by scientists (as they didn't exist back then), it was actually attacked by the religious!
Religious Objections to Copernicus
Martin Luther said:
"There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth."
That's only a quote but it's a very telling one because:
Copernicus and the Church: What the history books don't say - CSMonitor.com
Copernicus had a good relationship with the Catholic Church. It may come as a surprise, considering the Church banned Copernicus' "Des revolutionibus" for more than 200 years. Copernicus was actually respected as a canon and regarded as a renowned astronomer. Contrary to popular belief, the Church accepted Copernicus' heliocentric theory before a wave of Protestant opposition led the Church to ban Copernican views in the 17th century.
Des Revolutionibus was the only book banned (by the HRCC) but because it held
philosophical views which were contrary to the Church's teachings. Copernicus' maths? They weren't up for questioning by his peers. Hell, even members of the Catholic Church who followed the sciences acknowledged his mathematics as being solid:
Copernicus and his Revolutions
That this was a real issue is illustrated in the earliest critique of De revolutionibus by the Dominican Giovanni Maria Tolosani who praises the mathematical knowledge in the book while complaining that this is not sufficient. ‘The inferior science,’ he says, ‘receives principles proved by the superior’ [NOTE] meaning that astronomers should leave the loftier matter of natural philosophy to their betters. To bolster his position, it is necessary for Copernicus to talk up the status of astronomers without sounding too offensive. Copernicus used a number of rhetorical devices that were quite separate from his core arguments to try and lessen the force of these problems. The most obvious of these is the rather obsequious tone of much of De revolutionibus with Copernicus reminding his readers of his ‘mediocrity’ [NOTE]. But this was nothing unusual during the period and was a technique that could be used even when an author was putting down his rivals.
Opponents of Copernicus' work didn't base their arguments on science or even natural philosophy but religion:
The Theology of Haham David Nieto:An Eighteenth-Century Defense of the Jewish TraditionDavid Gans (1541-1613) said:
Nehmad veNaim is full of praise for Copernicus, whom he considers to be the greatest scholar of the age. But he does not accept his world view which, he says, was already known by the ancients and rejected by them. This attitude is explained by Waxman as being due partly to the influence of Tycho Brahe who was a great opponent of the Copernican revolution, and partly to the piety of the author who could not accept the view of Copernicus since it contradicts Biblical passages.
http://books.google.com.mx/books?id...EwBg#v=onepage&q=praise of Copernicus&f=false
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The writing is all over the wall, the objections to Copernicus' work came not from fellow natural philosophers (what you call scientists) they came from the religious:
However, what sets one of his books apart from the others? This:
Arguments that a modern thinker would describe as ‘scientific’ are rarer in De revolutionibus than might be expected. Certainly, there is no hint of Popper’s falsification or much else that qualifies as ‘scientific method’. Of the six books, more than five are taken up by a detailed geometrical and chronological analysis that successfully shows that a heliocentric model does indeed provide an alternative to the Ptolemaic model.
In short:
1) Copernicus' work was
never attacked by scientists as the scientific method had not been established.
1b)Scientific observers at the time actually praised his work; even those within the church.
2) The people in his field who criticized his work did so on the basis that it did not go far enough.
2b) It was not attacked by natural world observers on the basis that it was contrary to Ptolemaic tenets.
3) The attacks and bans of 1 of his books actually came from
the religious.
4) The mathematics his other works contained weren't in question (of the 6 books, De Revolutionibus was the one with the least amount of mathematics), it was his philosophical analysis of the information he'd encountered.
