You have your facts twisted, and this statement:
that mystics are, after all, productive people in a unique way. They tend not to produce material things (they are unmaterialistic people, remember) but create conditions "alchemically" to effect/affect conditions to improve the human condition.
is pure, unadulterated bullshit.
As for Aristotle, it was not his rational philosophy that plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, but Plato's crazed vision of the world. The Dark Ages was the stepchild of Plato. The Great Awakening, or the Renaissance, was the rediscovery of Aristotle.
As for Bertrand Russell, he was a fool and a charlatan, to be dismissed along with other flotsam and jetsam of history.
Newtonian physics is basically correct and still being used in mechanical models today. It was only with the advent of the quantum world and Einstein's breakthroughs in the understanding of physics that part of Newtonian physics no longer applied. It is unfair to blame Newton for holding back advancement. The guilty are the individual scientists that thought Newton was the "end all", the final word. They are the ones who slowed progress. It is the same sort of thinking as that of the head of the U.S. Patent Office in the 1800s who wanted to shut down the office because "everything worthwhile inventing has already been invented".
Terrence |
