Even a Scientist Can Be Wrong
22nd November 2020
I recently heard of a statement made by Neil deGrasse Tyson that I thought must have been a misquote. I looked into it and, sure enough, that wise man who’s quoted on tee shirts and coffee mugs said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.”
Whoa. The list of superseded scientific pronouncements is a long one, but I seem to recall a couple of real bloopers from his own field of expertise. It was once thought – as late as the early 20th century – that our own galaxy was the extent of the universe. Lo and behold, it is now accepted that there may be 100 billion galaxies comprising the universe – and counting. Now that’s a major whiff.
Not to mention the fact that luminaries such as Einstein, Shapley, Hoyle, and Gold believed that the universe was static, that is until Hubble peered through the Mt. Wilson telescope and verified the findings of that crazy Catholic priest George Lemaitre who had been trying to tell them the universe was expanding, and had been since the explosion of the primal atom (I won’t say creation).
Stay tuned for more alterations in “settled science.” It’s the nature of things.
‘Science’ means knowledge, and the problem with most ‘science’ is that it isn’t knowledge so much as it is merely opinion — educated opinion, granted, and perhaps highly reliable opinion, but opinion nevertheless. Witness how much ‘science’ needs to be revised and corrected every twenty years or so.
November 24th, 2020 at 18:12
Every time I hear about Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think about the Helen Hunt line from Twister: “He really is in love with himself, isn’t he? I thought it was just a summer thing.”