I mean this post seems AI generated to drive the kickstarter ad but I still think the question is interesting so I'll engage.

Revivalist movements for ancient mythologies will invariably use contemporary methods and mediums and worldviews but that is probably fine. It's not like the continuous existence of these mythologies never faced being imported to new technologies.

Like the research by Poly Schassma (sorry if I misspelt that, I'm going from memory) about the Tlaloc cult in the Chihauhuan desert / New Mexico. Surely the materials the people there had were very different to tenochtitlan but I dont think something was lost in the process. Mythology gains new significance depending on its context. It's not static, it doesnt convey a singular universal truth. It's a medium for meaning-making and teaching and it changes all the time.

There's no "rescuing" or "rediscovering' lost mythologies, because there is no inherent content to them. There's just readapting or recycling their elements for our current timed.

Astrology claims the planets influence us, not the stars. And serious astronomers practiced astrology for a century and more after the rough size of the solar system was discovered (by Copernicus).

Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler were both employed by the Holy Roman Emperor as "Imperial Mathematicians" but that really meant court astrologer. Kepler managed some quite accurate predictions, despite not being convinced that it was possible.

At the same time (c. 1600) Galileo thought astrology was superstition. Obviously the heavenly bodies had nothing to do with the way things went on Earth. He was particularly scornful of the idea that the Moon might cause the tides.

So it took quite a while to disentangle all this. E.g. to understand that magnetic fields were one thing, and "spirits" something else for which there was no evidence.

Bottom line, I think you are right that it was mainly a philosophical shift. People were still trying to get hard evidence to disprove astrology in the late 20th century, though trying to pin down these things is like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

Some famous scientist said that the issue was like this: as modern science expands it's grip, it began to provide a comprehensive pictures you could use to understand everything, from grains of sand to stars. Astrology and other pseudo-sciences just didn't fit into that picture - it was impossible to imagine, if you understood the picture, that pseudo-science worked as claimed and at the same time science-based technology works as we know it does.

I'm not an expert, but there are plenty of theories out there augmenting classical Darwin-Mendel models such as epigenetics, niche ecology, and quite a few more. The picture is substantially more complex than what we still learn in high school today.

AI chatbot knows them all. ;)

That’s interesting. Please say more.

I like systems and astrology is a evermore complex system that involves the interpreter’s intuition. We don’t have enough hooks for intuition. Parts of astrology are falsifiable, but only once, I find. Try it again and it doesn’t work. I also love the way that it enrages mediocre physical scientists.

It seems that once astrology identified a correlation between certain indicators in the Western Tropical chart and psychopathy it became persona non grata. Predictive issues did not help.

Astrology and Astronomy are two different things

Well, most people are still stuck with Darwin-Mendel theories to explain complexity of evolution - despite decades of research showing that this combo is really just a rather special case in explaining what's actually going on...

I took cosmetology instead of cosmology by mistake.

Keith Thomas makes an awkward point for the scientific-discovery story in Religion and the Decline of Magic: educated people dropped astrology after 1660, before anyone had a convincing refutation of it. Part of it was political. Astrologers like Lilly had been loud prophets during the Civil War, and after the Restoration that kind of prophecy looked dangerous and vulgar. Lilly himself got hauled before a Commons committee after the Great Fire because he'd printed a picture that seemed to predict it. And the almanacs kept selling in enormous numbers well into the 1700s, so it didn't really die. It moved down the social ladder and out of the universities.

The Air Loom case, as a matter of fact.

Confining people over hearsay meant taking an authoritative stance over knowledge.

😂

Humour theory also used to be an accepted field of study lol

Been married to my wife 26 years. Nope, it turns out she was serious about believing in astrology the whole time. I just found out. 

Science education. More work to be done.

When everybody realised it was bollocks. Chiefly when we understood the natures of stars and planets respectively, and the vast distances involved.

Cool AF.

Objectively Descartes had a huge influence on what was taught in universities about what we would call science, maths and philosophy in the half-century after he died. His world-view largely replaced Aristotle - or at least, was taught alongside, in universities across Europe. Whether you would call him a scientist is another matter. Descartes claimed you could sit in an armchair and figure everything out. Aristotle was in many ways a much better scientist, actually going out and observing nature and reporting what he saw.

But it's true that Cartesian philosophy turned out to be an effective springboard for real scientists like Hooke, Newton and Huygens to launch from.

You are msisrepresenting Aristotle.

Firstly, he didn't strip everything down to a question of properties. He wrote aboute mechanical phenomena and his approach was based on transfers of force. Though obviously a very primitive version and he made ttale of assuming that force can only be transferred under contact. This lead to him being wrong about why objects stay in the air when thrown. The approach isn't wrog fundementally. He just didn't have enough knowledge for it to work.

Secondly, even taking your example, you are not demonstrating that Aristotelianism is incompatible with modern science. In fact it isn't. Both the aristelean approach and modern physics talk about heat transfer. Hot fire makes cold water hotter so it evaporates. Only one lived in the -300s while the other more than a millenia or even 2 afterwards. Of course the newer one is going to be more correct. There are more tools and prior knowledge to come up with a more detailed explanation. But fundementally, it still boils down to the property of one thing being transfered to the other. Nothing sprids from nothing.

As for Aristoteles influence. Aristotle wins without a doubt. Between his life and the 1800s, he is the one who layed the groundwork for everything philosophers (In natural philosophy or physics) worked on. Even the ones who diverged from him the most were still jumping off his ideas or ideas of later aristotelians. As for its role in modern science. He is the one who layed out the first scientific method with observation and deduction. Medieval aristotelians then defended using the observation to explain things. And in the 14th century, Dietrich of Freibourgh managed to correctly explain rainbows using notions of light rays and refraction. Thanks to the works of aristotelian philosophers before him.

Stop slandering Aristotle. Modern era scientists didn't exist in a vacuum. Ancient and medieval philosophy were their foundation. Modern science wouldn't exist without it

Descartes was incomplete.

I think, therefore I am in relation.

I think its hard to play games like this because there are so many considerations thinking in terms of total influence and all the measures that would justify a claim like this are rather fuzzy.

That said I think this is a pretty uncontroversial take, Descartes is arguably one the most influential figures in all human history, especially western thought, of which scientific speculation is one element.

Thaaaaat saaaaaaid, if we did want to play this game low key Aristotle himself is probably the single most influential figure in the history of scientific thinking.

Especially if you count critical engagement with his work.

I am proud to share 99.9% of my DNA with this guy.

Quite the fuck up isn’t it?

Issac Newton has entered the chat.