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At 09:08 PM 12/22/00 -0500, you wrote: >In a message dated 12/22/00 3:11:10 PM Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask] >writes: > > > i must say that the notion of an exegetical science that renders > > "objective" readings of sacred texts strikes me as a theological > version of > > the kind of (newtonian) physics-envy that we find among some of the social > > "sciences" (pyschology, economics, sociology). > > >Nice irony. Newton is supposed to have done more experiments in alchemy than >in "science," and likes to explain what his scientific discoveries prove >about the perfection of God. > >pat precisely. newton was the last of the magi, but, having discovered some remarkable and remarkably consistent formulas for physical actions, got appropriated by his successors as the founder of modern physics. he was not only an alchemist, but a millennial calculator, and when at the end of the 19th cn, these writings were discovered, they were essentially buried by historians of science who wanted him to represent "objectivity." richard