Neil Degrasse Tyson Al Ghazali
I just came across this speech of Neil deGrasse Tyson in which he said that Imam Ghazali wrote: 'Mathematics is the work of Devil'. In such a scholarly seminar or conference, he does not even cite a single sentence of Ghazali, which would justify what he says. It seems that he is completely unfamiliar with the works of Ghazali.
Transcript:Editor’s note. The transcript is pretty much word for word, but I did clean up some of NDT’s vocal clutter like the words “and so, but, really, just, ok”. Those words makes sense in an oratory setting, but disrupt the flow of reading.Beyond Belief—Science, Religion, Reason and Survival. November 5 – 7 2006 Salt Institute (La Jolla, California)Introduction:We’re still in the science vs. Religion section. But I wanted to cap that off with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Neil is director of the Hayden Planetarium at Rose Center in New York. And you’ll also recognize him as the new host of PBS’s program Nova ScienceNow. Neil has something that will very nicely fit into what came up early this morning.NGT:What I want to do is put some issues on the table I have not seen commonly discussed, and that I think they ought to be front-and-center for these next several days.
I missed professor Weinberg’s talk. I tried to get here and I missed your talk completely. But I learned from informants that in fact we have some significant overlap in our discussion of Islam from a thousand years ago, so forgive me if I repeat some of what you might have already heard, but I will bring it out anyway because there’s a broader context that I want to share with you.Oh, in case you are wondering: that’s the Eagle Nebula. One of the few photos that you’ll see that are this beautiful that are not by the Hubble Telescope. This is a one meter telescope at Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona.
The shape of the Eagle is barely discernible in this frame, because the Eagle is about two or three times the size of this. And the head of the Eagle would be up here. And the wings off to the left and off to the right.
Perhaps most famous image of Hubble is a close-up of this zone right here, which has been variously called the “Pillars of Creation”, “God’s Fingers” and all sorts of other sort of religious references. People feel that way when they look at images of the cosmos, of course. I was always curious though that in the same universe you have things like the underbelly of a tarantula, and when magnified no one thinks religious thoughts when they make those observations. But it’s part of the same universe.I’ll get back to that in a few moments, so here.What I wanna do is: I wanna highlight a few issues. And these are issues that came together for an essay I wrote that appeared Natural History magazine “The Darwin Issue”.
It was the opening of our Darwin exhibit that is now traveling. It’s no longer there at the museum. But “The Darwin Issue” collected together articles on the relevance of evolution, not only as an important concept in biology, but an important concept in all of science.I thought long and hard about “How could I possibly contribute to this? I don’t know enough biology to be meaningful in that issue” and then I realized that there are elements of the Intelligent Design movement, that clearly – there’s a lot of teeth that people attending this workshop have put into that subject. And I asked myself: “Do I have anything to contribute to that?” And I realized that I did.
I want to fill a niche that I think is left unfilled. So let’s go through it. PtolemyLet me first start off with Ptolemy.
Ptolemy, was one of the greatest, most influential scientists and his most important work is of course Almagest, which is Arabic for “the greatest”. And in it he codifies the geocentric universe. And this Earth-centered universe prevailed for centuries, until Copernicus and Galileo turned that around.I want to call your attention to are notes that he penned in the margin of the manuscript of his work. Let me remind you that back then, you would look up at the night sky and the planets would move against the background stars; they would “wander”, because that’s what the word means in Greek: it’s “wanderer”. There were seven of these objects—the Sun and Moon included—and they would just move, they go to the left, and then they’d slow down and pause, and then they’d back up, and then they’d reverse again and this is was a mystery!
Neil Degrasse Tyson Facts
Complete mystery! And of course the heavens were not Earth. The fact that you didn’t understand what was going on up there was OK and expected because that was the work of the gods.
We, being mortal down here on Earth If you can’t understand it, don’t loose sleep over that fact. “In Isaac Newton’s writings—his Principia—he discovers the laws of motion (F = MA), discovers the laws of gravity It’s all there. He did this all before he turned twenty-six.”Ummm.
Halley asked Newton the famous question about elliptical orbits when Newton was 41. Principia was published when Newton was 45. Just about everything Tyson says about Newton is bull shit.Tyson likes to say Newton could have easily done Laplace’s n-body work had he not been satiified with the explanation that God kept the solar system system stable. Newton did make substantial efforts to model the 3 body system of the earth, moon and sun. So Tyson’s claims is demonstrably false from the get go. After Newton tried, Euler took a crack at it. Then Lagrange.
Neil Degrasse Tyson Wife
More than 100 years later Laplace built on the efforts of Newton, Euler and Lagrange.Emily, it’s quite possible you’ve never heard of Euler. He was one of the greatest mathematicians that ever lived. Lagrange was no slouch either. The notion that n-body mechanics would have been crumbs for Newton is horribly clueless.Tyson’s account of Bush’s 9-11 speech is false.
Bush’s actual speech was a call for tolerance and inclusion, not an “attempt to distinguish we from they”. Jonathan Adler wrote a column in the Washington Post how Tyson’s account of Bush’s 9-11 was false in every way.Ghazali never wrote that mathematics is the work of the devil. Nor did Islamic innovation end in the 12th century with Ghazali. For example the father of symbolic algebra was born three centuries after Ghazali’s death.Emily, you should include caveats and disclaimers if you’re going to repeat these falsehoods.
Neil Degrasse Tyson On God
By failing to do so you have also become a source of misinformation.Like. The intent of my post was to listen to a lecture given by NGT, provide a cleaner transcript, and to retain more information from it. I present it neutrally with no commentary on the trueness or falseness of the content.You have helpfully pointed out all the mistakes that NGT made in this talk, so consider this lecture “caveated and disclaimed”.I hope you are giving as much scrutiny to other public intellectuals and not just on NGT. God knows we could all use more fact-checking in today’s post-truth climate.Like. I’ve spent some time and effort calling out Trump’s falsehoods.
I regard Tyson and Trump as flip sides of the same coin: a culture that values celebrity and entertainment more than truth and accuracy.I haven’t called out all the mistakes in this lecture but thank you for acknowledging my criticisms and not removing them. There are many venues where this information has been actively censored. The process of suppressing information is well documented on the Wikipedia article’s talk pages.
I expect similar behind the scenes debates went on at other information outlets but these aren’t open to scrutiny.All human beings are vulnerable to error and confirmation bias. It bothers me that Tyson and many of his fans imagine themselves immune to these failings. Tyson and his fans going on about truth and accuracy is a lot like adulterous Republicans preaching family values.Like.
'When you start basking in the glory of God. You're kind of no good any more'&feature=youtu.be&t=1106He's saying this of Isaac Newton of all people.Supposedly Newton could have easily done n-body perturbation theory in an afternoon.
It would have been crumbs for Newton, after all - he invented calculus in two months! Why didn't he? Because he was content with the explanation that God intervened and kept the solar system stable.A lot wrong with Tyson's story.1) Newton did make substantial efforts to model n-body systems. So Tyson's claim that it would have been easy for him is demonstrably false from the get go.2) Other great mathematicians tried. After Newton made his attempt Euler took a crack at it. Then Lagrange. More than a hundred years later Laplace built a satisfactory model.
But he built on the efforts of Newton, Euler and Lagrange.3) Newton did not singlehandedly invent calculus in two months. Fermat, Cavalieri, Barrow, Descartes and others had laid the foundations in the generation before Newton.The history of Hamid al Ghazali is to support a rant against religion.-Tyson will chide Dawkins for being too caustic. He will distance himself from the more vocal atheists and say he doesn't care what people believe.Then he turns around and invents histories to bash religion.Dawkins may be brash but his stuff is accurate (so far as I know). On the other hand Tyson bears false witness in a warm, friendly voice.