Do Scientists "Inevitably" Discard Erroneous Theories?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Saying No to the Antichrist · Creation vs. Evolution: Do Scientists "Inevitably" Discard Erroneous Theories?

... Scientific knowledge in turn tells us something about what kinds of 9:25 processes may have taken place during and within creation. History teaches us that it is not a sustainable solution to 9:32 cling to one's own era'sscientific theories. When new knowledge arises the incorrect theories are inevitably 9:38 discarded ...

For a weekend or an evening, I was guest among Laestadians up in Norrland. So, my interest was piqued when Ready to Harvest made a video about Laestadians. Above quote is from it.*

Have you heard of the theory called "Historicism"? C. S. Lewis commented on it.

It is the idea that "history" has a certain direction. No, he is not going after the Apocalypse, as far as I can recall what he said in that essay. He was going after secular ideas about what the direction of history is.

I was distinctly underwhelmed when another convert from Lutheranism at the time celebrating in Novus Ordo, now in EO Form, referred to right wing ideologies as "the rubbish heap of history" ... not just because I happen to be right wing, as opposed to Communism, as opposed to abortion, to public school monopolies, top heavy administrations. But also because I considered a Catholic, having access to St. Thomas Aquinas (he even taught me how to read St. Thomas, explaining several basic terms that recur in the Summa), should know better than being a historicist. If even an Anglican like CSL could reject it, how come a Catholic like he wasn't rejecting it?

Perhaps it was just an unreflecting utterance of his personal disgust, him being a fan of Olof Palme to some degree. I'm an ex-fan.

Anyway, the above digression about historicism and why I know about the term should lead to a discussion of why it is wrong.

God gave St. John supernatural knowledge that the world was going for Armageddon. Fine and dandy, God is omniscient, and He has authorised the Bible books, all 73 of them, through the Catholic Church. The world is going for Armageddon. The Apocalypse is the 73:rd book of the Bible. That kind of historicism is not what we talk about. We talk about secular historicism, in Christians about "things that happen before the endtimes" and in non-Christians sometimes a reason for them mocking Christian end time beliefs.

The basic claim of a historicist is, we know history, and can therefore tell what direction history is going in. Simply by a process of extrapolation. A bit like forecasting world populations at a future date. I'm noting in this context that the forecast for 2000 has not been fulfilled, but the angst of one Ehrlich is still used to from it distill the policies that recommend getting fewer children, or in some cases preventing others even from having more children. An accursed lot. But anyway, the forecast of future world populations has been shown wrong more than once, and yet it is kind of the most basic, simply mathematical, forecast.

A historicist claims we can determine far more than just future statistics about facts that have been measured in statistics for a long time. Why? We know history. We know the important events in history. We know what direction these important events have so far taken. We can therefore determine what direction they will continue to take.

STOP. I'll be restating the case of C. S. Lewis in my own train of thought.

First of all, we don't know history. We only know recorded history, which is a subjective selection from it, and we only know the parts that have come to us, which is a smaller selection still, depending on the reading or lacks of reading of the single historicist.

Second, if we knew all of history, we could determine what's central. A bit like a limited universe has to have a geometric centre. Now, we have some reasons, denied by C. S. Lewis as to being determinating, that this centre is Earth. To him, we could only know Earth to be the centre if we could observe all the universe as God does, from its edges as well as everything in between. To me, we could only deny Earth to be the centre if we had such a view showing something else to be central. Either way, the point is, unlike the view we have of heavenly bodies even very far out (like fix stars) circling earth, whatever "eye of the cyclone" one may be in, one only observes part of what is around, and cannot determine from there that it is central. So, one could still determine it if one had the edges. And here is the rub, for history, we haven't.

Precisely because we have only a tiny fraction of the past. If we have Genesis and the Apocalypse as factual, we have lots more edges. If we don't, we have lots less. But overall, we haven't the edges. We have tiny fractions of them, except the most absolute ones, which are least like normal events in history, and these are only available to the Christian. As to alternative "edges" (like Neanderthals living 42 000 years ago as opposed to before the Flood), I do this blog to expose that humbug, those false conclusions.

But we would need internal edges of the tendencies, and those we usually do not have. In 1345, very few people knew that Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca had met in the company of the Bardi bankers who were just going bankrupt. Probably most people in Florence even didn't know. Even fewer knew what they talked about. And those who knew that, like the two themselves and some of their Bardi friends, now impoverished, at least as bankers, had no idea what those conversations would lead to above the future writings of the two. They did not know there would be a Plague three years later. They did not know Boccaccio would write the Decameron in the plague. They did not know what Decameron would inspire. Including Canterbury tales.

Including a trend for adventure stories, like Orlando inamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo. Which trend, not perhaps that work, certainly contributed to the spirit of adventure that a certain Columbus from Genua was going to push to a story of discovery ... except, I'm writing his biography without knowing it. Perhaps he didn't read such books. He just happened to be somewhat like those heros. Or perhaps it was his his wife Filipa Moniz Perestrelo who read them, she was from Portugal. Again, I'm speculating about a biography I do not have access to.

But the point is, all of the Renaissance was just around the corner, and it was also totally unforeseeable in 1345, when Boccaccio met Petrarca. A more secure line of connection between that meeting and Columbus would be, Petrarca started a fad for Cicero, which among similar bookish people (they would be called Meldahones by Sepharads), and that started a fad for research. One line of it would lead to Columbus poring over calculations of the size of the Earth. Another would lead to Lorenzo Valla disputing the Donation of Constantine, based probably in part of making the line of the Empire a bit too much unicolour and Constantine a bit too like Julius. This and some other tidbits of learning of his were going to influence the Deformers in ways he could not have foreseen. Nor could Boccaccio and Petrarca have foreseen it.

If a government imagines having total control over all people, and marginalising those they cannot control, in order to control the future course of events, those people are as foolish as Kronos trying to avoid to get the son who would overthrow him, his very behaviour led to the hiding of Zeus. Or as foolish as Kamsa who killed the sons of Vasudeva one after another and couldn't foresee that Balarama would change womb and Krishna would be born with miraculous powers to withstand Kamsa's tyranny. Probably the figure of Kamsa may owe sth to Herod, and the escape of Krishna with his parents to the escape of St. Paul. Mahabharata and Bhagavatapurana are for the one not necessarily and for the other pretty certainly not written in BC times. Because, it's not like keeping watch over a room from a camera. It's more like keeping lookout for every grain of sand on a beach. Or every star on the sky.

Now, what about the application to Scientists and their Theories?

When new knowledge arises the incorrect theories are inevitably 9:38 discarded

Can you spot the historicism?

It's in the word "inevitably" ... I would say it happens sometimes. But "inevitably" doesn't sound correct. It would mean "everytime" ... that's not the case. If you think it is, you have a very shallow grasp on the history of sciences. And a very shallow grasp on how well we know what is now supposed to be science. You have basically taken an inspirational children's book (in my own language, Swedish, there is one in the Series "Min Skattkammare" which is "Del VIII. Uppfinningar och upptäcktsfärder (1949)" where the series title means "my treasure trove" and the volume's title means "inventions and discovery journeys"), and based your view on the subject on that children's book. You have been allergic to going into detail, or you have been heavily biassed from that book to interpret the details as much as possible in the sense of this children's book.

I'm actually a bit surprised that Volume VIII of Min Skattkammare could be printed as late as 1949, since it wasn't a reprint. Shouldn't it have been 1849? Or even better 1831, when Washington Irving wrote Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus? Isn't history of science going forward every year to more objectivity and less and less bias in the sense of this historicism? My bad, such a statement is also historicist! But seriously, this idea of science marching towards a perfection of more and more knowledge and less and less false knowledge, this relict of historicism is perhaps more prevalent than others. Decolonialism and Celtic language revivals put (mostly) certain historicisms of a very Darwinian and Marxist type to rest. No, the world is not going to more and more control of its totality under the leadership of the white man from Europe, Canada, and US. Small languages are not necessarily dying off to give more room to the big ones. That's obvious to most people. Some of the more benighted ones who don't get that can be decent on other accounts, but not getting it is benighted.

However, the sacrality of Western Modern Science has survived the débris of so much other Historicism, which now seems simply "left behind by history" (what a historicist phrase!). Somehow, so many people, and more religious people than actual hard scientists, still carry around the view of Science that was vehiculated by Min Skattkammare. A work which is probably out of print now, only sold in old books shops, given that the original edition involved phrases like "Niggerland" (I don't think it was in one of the parts I was re-reading).

Another piece of Historicism is the idea that if a theory was more popular 70~80 years ago than today, and is even regarded with some disgust today, the polite way of dealing with it is calling the older and (for the moment) discredited theory "antiquated" or "dated" ... Swedish "föråldrad" ... a term which implies:

• people who believed it were excused, they lived back then
• we shouldn't believe it now
• someone believing it now is "behind the times"

Whether a discredited idea is really bad or not, there is no guarantee it will remain socially discredited. The term "antiquated" mixes things that have come out of fashion for very different reasons. The term "Niggerland" has come out of fashion because it is racist. But racism may make a comeback, alas. The idea of Adam and Eve are also considered "antiquated" ... but in this case, it's only so because of a belief in the "ineluctable" progress of science. And, apart from historicism, it is only seemingly "ineluctable" in the views of one holding the Conflict thesis, because they celebrate every change of ideas away from Medieval Catholicism as automatically a triumph for for Science. A view which led to the Scientific Optimism of a certain movement, of which the Leader ought to have remained in painting. Really.

And anyone seeing Adolf paint in 1900, who could have foreseen that in 1919 he would first be part of Communist régimes, in Munich, and then become part of a party founded by Anton Drexler. How many Jews in 1933 preferred Nazis over Austro-Fascists, because they believed this Scientific Optimism and despised religion? Which corresponds very well to how NSDAP differred from Vaterländische Front. Obviously the latter involved Christian Socials, a party founded by among others Johannes Emmanuel Veith. A convert from Judaism. A medical doctor (that and friend of St. Clemens Maria Hofbauer). And an author who in Die Anfänge der Menschenwelt (Vienna, 1865), promoted Young Earth Creationism. Compared to that, Hitler was an ardent Evolutionist, not necessarily of the materialistic kind, but an Evolutionist still.**

But before the Evolutionist view of ineluctable progress in (civilised) man, there was a general Historicist view of ineluctable progress. That's where National Socialism came from. Meanwhile, Austria was aware of being an anomaly and a quirk and content with that. Hence Dollfuss, hence Schuschnigg, hence Georg von Trapp, none of them tried to help the ineluctable progress along. And none of them committed acts of inhumanity. You see, once you give divine status to anything, including God, you also give a kind of "luck charm status" to doing the work of that thing. Yes, I do believe God will help me along because in some sense, fighting for God's truth against Protestantism and Judaism, Islam and Evolution, I'm kind of doing "God's work" ... not as the God's work known as liturgy, the principal one, but one which is subsidiary and known as apologetics. Now, if you believe that the Progress of Science is ineluctable, you give that divine status. And some people believed they had a luck charm in helping the progress of science along. George Patton didn't find them all that lucky. But what's worse is, they will probably one day get back in luck big time. I think this worship of Progress of Science is the essence of the Scarlet Beast, and we know it will make a comeback for 3 and 1/2 years. Not from Historicist reasononing, but from the Apocalypse. So, unless I misidentified it, Patton's victory won't last. And of course there were, only barely more human, Scientific Progressives in Patton's nation as well. I heard a horrible story about Walter Plecker the other day.*** But fortunately, Patton didn't bring Walter Plecker to the Amerika-Häuser.

Unfortunately, Scientific Progressives didn't lose ground all that much even in West Germany. In the 1970's, the idea of "religious delusion" was used to decide a Custody fight. In 1992, a certain Ratzinger, brought up under Hitler, put § 283 into the Catechism of the Catholic Church, proving that his supposed pope at the time, a Karol Wojtyla who had taken the "papal" name of John Paul II, was not a Catholic and was therefore not Pope. But the "Laestadian Lutheran Church" is even more into Scientific Progressivism than he, it would seem.

Will knowledge of the absurdity and malfeasance of Historicism automatically, inevitable, lead to its being rejected? Unfortunately not. That would be both very basic Historicism, and also ignorance of the Apocalypse. But can you contribute to its being rejected by some more people, by spreading this? Then, please do so!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
9.XII.2024

Conceptio Immaculata gloriosae semper Virginis Genitricis Dei Mariae, quam fuisse praeservatam, singulari Dei privilegio, ab omni originalis culpae labe immunem, Pius Nonus, Pontifex Maximus, hac ipsa recurrente die, solemniter definivit.

(Usually 8.XII, but this year, that was II Lord's Day of Advent).

* What is the Laestadian Lutheran Church?
Ready to Harvest | 8 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GnoidyUAWk

** Darwinian Racism: How Evolutionary Theory Shaped Nazi Thinking
Richard Weikart | February 2, 2022, 6:57 AM
https://evolutionnews.org/2022/02/darwinian-racism-how-evolutionary-theory-shaped-nazi-thinking/

*** Virginia’s Sick Obsession with Proving Race
NYTN | 6 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPkvUtP--mI