{"id":101,"date":"2013-05-16T22:36:01","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T22:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mayohomeopathy.ie\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2016-05-02T22:33:11","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T21:33:11","slug":"john-crown-enlightenment-bad-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mayohomeopathy.ie\/index.php\/john-crown-enlightenment-bad-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof John Crown’s unenlightening article: a reply"},"content":{"rendered":"
Prof John Crown Unenlightened on Enlightenment<\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n

Madam –\u00a0Senator John Crown’s call to bring us back 200 years to the Enlightenment (We Need To Innoculate Ourselves Against Scientific Ignorance<\/em>, 28.10.2012) is wonderfully ironic. The\u00a0Enlightenment did much good but also brought many problems until we were partly saved by Romanticism. It certainly isn\u2019t the high point of human evolution \u2013 as if everything before or since is the Darkenment!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

Enlightenment: the age of reason? – “We don’t need scientists”<\/p><\/div>\n

Prof Crown\u00a0contemptuously criticises all and sundry for being ignorant of science yet when one points the finger at others, remember; three more fingers are pointing back at oneself. In his simplistic caricature of Galileo\u2019s fate he criticises the Church but is ignorant of the contribution of clergy to science and maths. It was a priest, George Lemaitre, who first proposed the Big Bang theory in the 1920s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hahnemann\u00a0the Enlightenment Scientist<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In criticising Homeopathy he reveals more ignorance, this time closer to home. As a cancer doctor he uses radium to treat cancer but doesn\u2019t radium cause cancer? He treats patients with Tamoxifen yet this drug causes cancer. He\u2019ll treat ovarian cancer with platinum yet Homeopaths revealed 200 years ago in their proving of it that it causes ovarian cancer (usually right-sided). Ironically, each day, senator Crown proves the truth of another \u201claw of nature\u201d(though probably unknowingly) \u2013 the law of cure as discovered by Dr Samuel Hahnemann that \u201conly like cures like.\u201d I\u2019m sure Hahnemann was a man of the Enlightenment quoting the catch-cry of that era, Aude Sapere<\/em>, on the first page of his Organon of Medicine<\/em>. He was a friend of \u201cOur dear\u201d Immanuel Kant,\u00b9 the central figure of the Enlightenment but Hahnemann, though a man of the Enlightenment, never limited himself to it. So maybe, after all, Mr Crown is closer to Homeopathy than he realises! Ironic?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr Crown possibly thinks medicine is scientific; it\u2019s not, after all he can\u2019t cure the common cold with it and never will. He suggests making children study science \u201cas a foundation without an exam, like civics\u201d but civics isn\u2019t a subject although as part of CSPE is in fact an exam subject. And has he not heard about forthcoming changes to the Junior Cert..? Perhaps when prescribing for everyone else he could start by taking a dose of his own medicine because when talking of others: \u201cignorance\u201d; \u201cself-satisfied sophisticates\u201d; \u201csuperiority\u201d; \u201cscientifically illiterate\u201d, it seems, with his\u00a0revealing choice of words,\u00a0he\u2019s really pointing at himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

For more on the Enlightenment read Ollie Cussen’s article in Prospect<\/em><\/span>\u00a0magazine and Ed Feser’s review of Anthony Pagden’s book <\/span>Why the Enlightenment Still Matters<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>as well as my other posts on the Enlightenment.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

For a better insight into the Enlightenment see John Marsh’s new book\u00a0The Liberal Delusion<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Breaking the Enlightenment Spell: Idealising the age of reason as a perfect model of truth, virtue and knowledge is bad history as well as bad philosophy,\u00a0a review of the updated version of\u00a0The Enlightenment: History of an Idea\u00a0by Vincenzo Ferrone, translated by Elisabetta Tarantino (Princeton University Press,<\/a><\/span> \u00a319.95), <\/em><\/span>is available here<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

1. See Dr Haehl’s biography vol. 2, available from Minerva Books<\/a>\u00a0or Amazon<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof John Crown Unenlightened on Enlightenment Madam –\u00a0Senator John Crown’s call to bring us back 200 years to the Enlightenment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,12,21,3,14],"tags":[355,23,354,1140,352,353,205,24,356],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-homeopathy","category-medicine","category-medicines","category-science","tag-aude-sapere","tag-enlightenment","tag-george-lemaitre","tag-homeopathy","tag-john-marsh","tag-liberalism","tag-prof-john-crown","tag-religion-2","tag-romanticism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t