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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7471005" data-attributes="member: 42582">This can't be true, because "weight' was a meaningful term even before the notion of mass as distinct from weight had been discovered. (According to the wikipedia page on the Cavendish experiment, in Cavendish's time the distincition between mass and weight wasn't made in the way it is made in contemporary physics.) Of course it's true, in the real world, that weight is a function of mass, and of the operation of universal gravitation. But those equipment lists could have been written, without change, in the seventeenth century! Are you really saying that a seventeenth person who talked about the weight of things was presupposing the operation of scientific laws that s/he didn't know about, and - given the state of knowledge and equipment - perhaps even couldn't know about.I can't believe we're still stuck on this.Surely you can appreciate that it is possible to know that unsupported objects fall, and that objects have weight, without knowing about universal gravitation? Surely you aware that people have known that unsupported objects fall, and that objects have weight, for somewhere between 100,000 and 1 million or so years; but have know about universal gravitation for about 300 years?Given that those people were able to thinks, and talk about their lives and world, and imagine things, and tell stories, iwithout implying anything about universal gravitation, fantasy authors today can do the same thing. And do.Of course Gygax drew on the real world. So did Aristotle. So did the author of Beowulf. But you can draw on the real world (what, upthread, I and others have called "common sense tropes") without assuming that the real world is as it is in virtue of the operation of scientific laws.Yes. My point is that people can know things about the real world without knowing science; and that we can imagine those things without imagining them to be grounded in scientific reality. (Just as Aristotle did, given that he didn't know a great deal of scientific reality.)The Greeks, who posited that the elements were air, earth, fire and water, knew of these different metals. But that these metals are elements is a modern discovery.If the elements of air, earth, fire and water are not in fact the elements from which matter is composed, then why are they called elements?I've highlighted a key word. Alternative to what?He doesn't use the word alternative, does he? He refers (p 57) to "nearly endless possibilities". It is a possibility, not mandated - but no default is specified to which it is an alternative.I'm not referring to Spelljammer, I'm referring to the phlogiston theory of combustion, which was extent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.If you're not familiar with the history of science and the development of human knowledge over 100,000+ years of human history, that would help explain why you seem to think that having beliefs about the world - which human beings have always had - entails knowing scientifc truth - which, in fact, people have known only for a few hundred years or so.*******************************Yes. The psionic rules deliberately evoke scientific notions.They also invoke Freudian psychological notions - id, ego, super-ego. But I've yet to read the poster who says, therefore, that it is a game rule that D&D characters have , by the rulebook, the psychological strucutres and processes that Freud posits!On that latter point, I think that's because most D&D players don't use Freud as part of their everyday framework of thought, but do use molecules.On the broader point, psionics are presented in an optional Appendix, and so can't be treated as establishing a default. And in fact a frequent reason given by people who don't like psionics in D&D is that they introduce too much scientific flavour into a fantasy game.</blockquote>

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