Word: scientistic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...three physical science critiques offered of Velikovsky's cosmic conception that appear in the book, Sagan's is the most accessible to the non-scientist. Sagan uses basic physical and chemical theory to attack the ideas of repeated planetary collisions and of the involvement of a comet in the stopping of the earth's rotation (along with the falling of manna from Heaven). He concludes, "To rescue the hypothesis requires special pleading, the vague invention of new physics, and selective inattention to a plethora of conflicting evidence...
Over the long run, the scientist's time is far better used if assertions of scientific truth coming from nonscientific sources are rejected out of hand... than if each and every such claim is accepted seriously and patiently subjected to detailed testing...
...least one scientist has come to Ptolemy's defense. Astronomer and Science Historian Owen Gingerich of Harvard admits that the Syntaxis contains "some remarkably fishy numbers." But he is convinced that any deception was honestly motivated, and that Ptolemy, like many a modern-day scientist, merely chose to publish the data that best supported his theories. These ideas are outdated anyway. Ptolemy's theories were all aimed at proving that the earth was the center of the universe. By 1543 Copernicus had proved Ptolemy wrong...
Gnomes (Abrams; $17.50), by Dutch Scientist Wil Huygen, is the most original and sustained piece of whimsy since the productions of J.R.R. Tolkien. Throughout the book that bears their name, the little creatures are treated soberly as an endangered species "well out of sight, so much so in fact that belief in their existence is waning rapidly." A series of maps, anatomical charts, even recipes are provided, enlivened with sly, soft-focus illustrations by Rien Poortvliet. Gnomes one of the season's very few new books designed to be savored by the entire family. That the male gnome remains...
with alien life forms?but, of course, no one will believe his story. The rest of Close Encounters' plot follows Roy and several other UFO sighters, including a mysterious international scientist (Truffaut) and a neighborhood woman (Dillon), as they overturn their lives in a mad attempt to arrange a rendezvous with the extraterrestrial visitors. When an earthling makes actual contact with aliens, that is "a close encounter of the third kind." (The first kind is sighting; the second, physical evidence...