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Comment by michaelwww | Hacker News Reader

Postman claims that tools "attack culture…[and] bid to become culture", subordinating existing traditions, politics, and religions. Postman cites the example of the telescope destroying the Judeo-Christian belief that the Earth is the centre of the solar system, bringing about a "collapse…of the moral centre of gravity in the West".

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That is some amazingly sloppy research work on his part, and he just seems to have an axe to grind, so he is okay with the sloppiness. The geocentric model is due to Ptolemy and Aristotle, Greek philosopher/scientists pre-dating Christianity by centuries who were both probably almost completely unaware of the Jews. Copernicus, author of the heleocentic model, was a Roman Catholic and Pope Clement VII found the theory interesting [1]. Galileo, creator of the telescope, was also a Roman Catholic, was also a personal friend of the Pope Urban VIII, the pope at the time of his trial by the Inquisition [2]. Pope Urban VIII supported the heliocentric model, the trial was related to other issues. Galileo's favorite daughter was a cloistered nun, and we have their letters still [3].

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#Heliocentri...

2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

3: http://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Daughter-Historical-Memoir-Sc...

He writes books for a wider audience and I think he is speaking broadly in terms of the bigger picture. It was a belief among ordinary people that the earth was flat and the center of the universe. The telescope probably had the most to do with changing that world view. I think we have to take what pop-sci writers say with a grain of salt (Michio Kaku for example.)

Except that is the whole primary thesis of his book, and it is based on trivially falsified premises.

(At the time ordinary people had probably no real conception of the general order of the universe, being uneducated illiterate peasants. The educated at the time mostly viewed the Earth as sperical, because of the ancient Greek philosopher/scientists, and the Earth as the center of the Pysical Universe, again because of the ancient Greek philosopher/scientists.)

Ah, I didn't realize that. I haven't read this book, but did read his "Amusing Ourselves to Death." Thanks.

I'm going completely off of the Wikipedia page you posted, I haven't read the book either, so it could be really misrepresenting the book. But the whole "theocratic -> technocratic society" step seems to be based on that shallow argument.

"Amusing Ourselves to Death" seems like a good book, I have a copy but have yet to read it.

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