Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

“Though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.”— Rumi

“Being soaked alone is cold. Being soaked with your best friend is an adventure.”
― Emily Wing Smith, Back When You Were Easier to Love

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."----Shakespeare

(Aug 25, 2025 06:17 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."----Shakespeare

I can't even recall what short story or novel that Ray Bradbury borrowed that for, as an opening or an inspiration or whatever.

It was a novel. I remember it well. My mom had it in paperback while we were camping out in the Texas hill country, and I was interested in it. Don't think I read it all, but I did see the movie that came out later on.

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"The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble... They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This 'outgrowing', as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency."---Carl Jung

"The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you."---Carl Sagan

Unlike the pseudo-religious "true believers," there is no such thing as a "skeptical movement."
There are simply things that can be verified and things people believe that cannot be verified.
It's actually the "true believers" who insist people believe them.

"The skeptical movement (British spelling: sceptical movement) is a contemporary social movement based on the idea of scientific skepticism. The movement has the goal of investigating claims made on fringe topics and determining whether they are supported by empirical research and are reproducible, as part of a methodological norm pursuing "the extension of certified knowledge".

Roots of the movement date at least from the 19th century, when people started publicly raising questions regarding the unquestioned acceptance of claims about spiritism, of various widely held superstitions, and of pseudoscience.[4][5] Publications such as those of the Dutch Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij (1881) also targeted medical quackery. Using as a template the Belgian organization founded in 1949, Comité Para, Americans Paul Kurtz and Marcello Truzzi founded the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), in Amherst, New York, in 1976. Now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), this organization has inspired others to form similar groups worldwide."--- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism

So a specifically social movement, not representative of just being skeptical.

Quote:So a specifically social movement, not representative of just being skeptical.

The movement comprised by skeptics. It's all clearly laid out in the article.