Quoting gem6868 <gem6868@verizon.net>:
"Very much of modern chemistry has its roots in alchemy, for example. " the results of the work (won't dignify them with the term "experiments"), but not the thinking behind it. You're saying that the roots of NASCAR racing are hairy ancestors with a wheeled cart. Kinda sorta, but no, not really. Science as we know it is fairly recent. It took a long time to get rid of all those charlatans who were trying to turn lead into gold (thebasis of alchemy, and alchemists).
Hardly. Many of those charlatans kept very good notes on their experiments. The fact that they didn't achieve their goal does not mean that their work wasn't useful. As for the thinking behind it, again, the fact that it turned out to not be true (no chemical way to turn lead to gold), doesn't mean that it was baseless.
Neil Gilmore raito@raito.com ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"