Talk:Bulverism

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[edit] simple example

May be nice to coin a briefer and more obvious example. 144.135.136.210 04:04, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not proper to just make up an example and stick it in the article, but there's nothing wrong with putting one here:
You argue that the Mona Lisa is the greatest piece of art in the world, but that's just because you are a descendant of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Kind regards, David Bergan 08:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too Many Quotations

The article consists almost entirely of direct quotations. The article could summarize the author's views, citing his works as primary sources. I hope to get around to fixing this in a few days. —Latiligence (talk) 21:34, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

  • I rewrote one quotation and removed the tag, but please keep this in mind for future contributions. —Latiligence (talk) 13:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Context of A Reply to Professor Haldane?

I want to rewrite this quotation as prose to make the article more encyclopedic, but the quotation by itself is ambiguous. The quotation starts off referring to the Professor's "explanation of this", but the antecedant of this is never made clear, except that they are discussing some kind of "social change". What "change" are Lewis and the Professor debating here? —Latiligence (talk) 13:18, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that A Reply... was written in response to Haldane's review of Lewis's Space Trilogy where Haldane thought Lewis's stories were rebuking science and scientists. A Reply... was a reply to that review, but it wasn't published until after Lewis's death in some of his essay collections.
The change that's being talked about has something to do with replacing religion with science in culture. Haldane was an anti-Christian biologist who thought that this change was better for society, and his argument to Lewis was that Lewis wanted the status quo because he "stands to lose." Lewis pithily replies that this kind of reasoning could be turned back on Haldane since Haldane would want the change because he "stands to gain" from it... being essentially one of the new 'high priests' of the new culture by virtue of his status among scientists. So Lewis dismisses that side of the issue altogether because that kind of back and forth makes no progress.
Also in the reply, Lewis touches on why he puts faith in democracy to govern rather than theocracy (or the scientific equivalent) even though he is a religious person. (Haldane sort of hinted at some kind of scientific -ocracy.) And he also writes that Haldane misrepresented his stories as being anti-science, where Lewis clarified that he considers himself pro-science, but anti-"Scienceism". David Bergan (talk) 16:13, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like you really know your stuff! :D Do you think you could better integrate the quote into the article? I have insufficient domain knowledge to do anything more than copyediting and cleanup here. —Latiligence (talk) 00:33, 24 May 2008 (UTC)