Mind-dump, sans edit
18 October 2021
Colorado

If you read many books on history of science, you will find such beliefs ringing through the ages. Often with lethal consequences for explorers and scientists.

The mathematics — if you want to read some interesting history, go there. I’ve read plenty of books on history of mathematics. It’s been years so specific titles evade memory, but vignettes and lessons are are bountiful.

I will dig into my memories. Any historians of mathematics, please correct me if wrong.

Bodies of scientists and philosophers who crossed a red line are innumerable. Start with Galileo and his bitter end.

The maths such as algebra and trigonometry were considered Satan’s work — and so Jews were used by some as celestial navigators. Jews were allowed to use the math because nobody cared if they went to hell. Which was fine: Jews didn’t care if everyone else went to hell. [Edit -- and thus entering the enduring debate on whether Jews or Judaism 'believes' in hell.]

And thus, in some book I read on Jews and mathematics, Jews are said to have gotten a giant head start in banking. Jews had a monopoly on big math. Or what would be considered high school calculus these days. Jews let their minds expand into the maths, and that is the basic language for all sciences, and a lot more.

Some Arabs also took an early lead, then lost it.

Jews got a massive head start. In part due to their own industriousness. But there are plenty who are just as industrious, and smart, such as the Scots. Never discount the Scots.

There were many sea-anchors slowing down Europeans, such Catholic Church and others burning people at stake.

And in Asia, Chinese and Japanese were about their own sciences and with much success. Not to mention the Indians. But always, scientists who went too far risked death, or worse. Dr. Robert Malone, today, would have been killed in many places already. Great, great courage is required to be a real scientist, to REALLY follow the math and ‘the science.’

Likewise with journalists. Dancing with fire, and lions in the darkness.

Oh lord, this could go for hours. People experimenting with silly lenses and refraction, and making those useless microscopes, wasting time peering at drops of water. Playing with silly magnets. Always writing long equations in that strange language. Devil’s work.

Launching cameras into space to track weather when you can just watch the birds, the barometer, and clouds.

Luddites never win in the end. The Prince’s education does not match the heft of his title. He probably wrote those silly words on an iPhone.

Wearing blue. Why is blue so rare in nature, Prince William? There was a time when it was heresy to ask such questions, to count a horse’s teeth, or to imagine the earth running more around the sun than the inverse. Everyone knows we are the center of the Universe. And when Prince Williams says such words, he echoes the ignorance of royalty through the centuries.

Pretentious ideas that may sound like virtue signaling in modern times. But believe this — if you read a few dozen books on history of the maths and sciences, you will see that his words are forever to the edge of literate time. Same same. Different mouth, same words.

The little rich prince will lose in the end. But like royalty before, he’ll have to be beaten back with a stick.

Eschew luddites.

Keep launching. And launch some more.

https://www.salemnews.com/news/prince-william-before-travelling-to-space-save-the-planet/article_e191dd84-3a3e-577d-ad8a-723f6cdf7476.html