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Monday, September 5, 2011

December, 1960: "Now Hear This"

Asimvo's next anecdote comes in the December 1960 issue of F & SF:

"The ancient Greeks weren't always wrong.

I am taking the trouble to say this strictly for my own good, for when I trace back the history of some scientific concept, I generally start with the Greeks, then go to great pains to show how their wrong guesses had to be slowly and painfully corrected by the great scientists of the 16th and 17th centuries, usually against the strenuous opposition of traditionalists. By the time I had done this on several dozen occasions, I began, as a matter of autohypnosis, to think that the only function served by the ancient philosophers was to put everyone on the wrong track.

And yet, not entirely so."

Asimov then goes on to talk about dolphins and porpoises, and the then new research going on with them.


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