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Paul Grobstein's picture

evolving systems: one more challenge

Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Sun, 08/16/2009 - 8:24pm.

From Repainting the past, by Randy Cohen, NYT ethicist ....

"As an unofficial part of the worldwide festivities saluting Galileo ... I'd like to do some recanting of my own ... My insurance anaology was folly, but his cosmology was correct, as he knew and as his adversary, the church, eventually acknowledged four centuries later ...  I expect and deserve no such approbation, even 400 years from now"

The problem is that Galileo's cosmology was not provably "correct" at the time, and is provably "incorrect" now: the earth doesn't go around the sun, the earth and the sun orbit a common center of mass.  So why, in an evolving systems context, do we celebrate Galileo?  And what advice/perspective could we offer Cohen, about his own approbation or any one else's?      

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