Hi, Andrew —

Ignorance.

There may have been exceptional philosophers but not too many empirical scientists of the same caliber. Galileo suffered from this dearth among his contemporaries, to his great injustice, however, an analogy from today can shed light on his situation and others.

It is hard to imagine when we take so much of it for granted but if someone came along and suddenly taught something that turned our view of the world inside out we may offer the same resistance.

Sometimes there is a needed tension between science and philosophy often because politics is enmeshed with it. Take climate change, for example. It is anathema (for the politically correct) to reject the theories of global warming — even though the data has been knowingly falsified, politically charged, and accepted as fact. There is good reason to remain skeptical as many scientists reject the conclusion. They point to sun spots and other natural phenomena as far more powerful than man to affect substantial change. Second, the climate has undergone cyclical changes throughout the epochs, and lastly, political motivations tend to corrupt the scientific interpretation of any data.

So I, and many others, are like the Medieval Church. We won't concede that the facts of climate change are what the political pundits, and the scientists that are aligned with, say they are until the proof supersedes all other data. There is not that level of data without contradiction so I remain skeptical and unmoved.

• Will history prove me ignorant?

We'll see.

Peace,

Bob Kirby