Flandry, Bond and Pym were discussed in Three Heroes;
Heinlein and Anderson were compared in Heinlein And Anderson: A Brief Comparison;
fictional accounts of time were summarized in Knowledge Of The Future And The Past;
time travel organizations imagined by Anderson and Heinlein were compared in The Time Patrol And The Temporal Bureau and in The Time Patrol And The Temporal Bureau II;
the philosophy of two Heinlein short stories was discussed in Solipsism.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I left comments at four of the six links you gave here.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Thanks.
Paul.
Paul:
I remain unable to leave comments on your other blogs. I tried to leave the following on "Three Heroes":
Paul and Sean:
I haven't been able yet to verify the truth or falsehood of the quote below. Nonetheless, I find it worth considering:
"The Inquisition was also revolutionary lenient for its time, as it limited the use of torture (which was very common in secular courts), allowed the defendants legal representation, and issued death sentences much less often than in municipal proceedings where petty thieves usually were sent to swing. However all this pales compared to the fact that the Inquisition rose above its contemporary courts in placing the burden of evidence on the prosecutor. You are reading that correctly; the Inquisition re-introduced the legal concept of 'presumed innocent until proven guilty' to Western civilization, and is the reason we have it today. (While the concept of placing the burden of proof on the prosecutor and not the defense was invented by the Roman Empire, the fall of Rome had left it in disuse for centuries until the concept was revived by the Church courts.)
"And the Spanish Inquisition ended witch trials in Spain a full century before the rest of Europe because it required scientific proof of witchcraft — not just eyewitness accounts.
"In the late 16th Century the Spanish Inquisition ruled that there was no such thing as witchcraft and declared all those who claimed to be witches lunatics. This did not, however, stop magistrates courts and municipal authorities hanging hundreds, possibly thousands, of people as 'witches' regardless."
I tested several of the other blogs as well. Trying to Publish or even Preview my comment instead erases it.
David,
Sorry about your problems. I will ask Ketlan if he can do anything about it but he will probably just say, "It's Google."
It is still bad that anything like the Inquisition ever existed in the first place.
Paul.
Kaor, DAVID!
First, I'm sorry you have been having so much trouble uploading comments here. I have thought of you sometimes, and wondered why we have been seeing so few remarks by you. Now we know and I hope the problem will soon be corrected.
And your remarks about the Spanish Inquisition and how it poured cold water on people inflamed by the witchcraft mania of the 1500's/1600's were confirmed by Charles Williams in his book WITCHCRAFT (first pub. in 1941). The Inquisition's boring insistence on hard evidence of actual harm done by alleged witches did its bit to check the mania in Spain and her Empire. Altho, as you said, the secular courts might well had been more credulous.
I agree with Paul that it would have been better for Spain if Ferdinand V and Isabel I had not founded the Spanish Inquisition.
Ad astra! Sean
That's a bit of an exaggeration. The Inquisition -was- much more skeptical than some other tribunals about witches, but it never denied the existence of "black magic" or deals with the devil. It just regarded most witchcraft panics as hysterical fabrications, and also denied that witchcraft could possibly be as -powerful- as most people thought.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with you. Charles Williams made precisely the same points in his book WITCHCRAFT: the Spanish Inquisition formally accepted the possibility of black magic but still demanded hard evidence of actual harm done, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
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