What distinguishes science from myth ?
At what point could the first human set aside the mythological worldview and begin to ask their surroundings with a new look that would lead to some kind of scientific (or pre-scientific) way of thinking?
Certainly only after the appearance of the human ability to doubt so called 'well established truths'.
While one accepts blindly taught data as unquestionable truths, it remains impossible to build new hypotheses, and without such people can only imitate, as monkeys do, what is brought to them by others as 'ready truths'. Shouldn't we regard this as the actual start of the Homo sapiens species: the moment in which a first humanoid ape acquired the ability to doubt?
Whenever someone conceived the Sun as a god from which the Moon born every sunset, and taught this dogmatically to following generations, this might not be regarded even as a pre-scientific assertion! People might repeat that belief forever but, strictly speaking, this may not be regarded as an expression of their true act of thinking! A person who is not able to doubt, only mimicks other's thoughts (like apes in a zoo do when seeing children's gestures) but he or she does not think by him or herself. The naive expression "he or she acts according to his/her own thoughts", commonly used, contains an evident tautology, since people are not exercising the faculty of thinking when they merely repeat other's ideas!
Obviously, the progress of scientific knowledge always requires the accumulation and rigorous transmission of knowledge to further generations, and almost as a truism it must be said that such may never cease.
Copernicus has been capable of realizing his immense leap from the Ptolemaic system to the heliocentric one only after doubting the then absolute dogma that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo, while trying to demonstrate this with his telescope, was forced to remain silent under death penalty through fire by those mighty, demoniac inquisitors .
Newton after seriously doubting that Aristotelian physics could really be the best description of the world, was able to build his magnificent theory of gravitation .
The greater the ability to put previously acquired knowledge into a coherent doubt, the greatest the genius of a scientist.
Albert Einstein, after doubting radically his predecessors' systems, has been able to surpass them all with his Theories of Relativity, which we, laypeople, would like to once and for all understand, but hardly can... A common complain expressed regarding our compprehension of Quantum Physics, String Theory, of Black Holes, the Higgs boson, etc., etc..
And beware that all these strange concepts, belonging to Contemporary Physics, long ago invaded our daily lives. Whether we like it or not, a whole myriad of hightech gadgets used in our everyday life makes use of them.
Yes, to doubt about these subjects is a task for experts!
It is not difficult to deduce that, for science to keep advancing, it needs not only the transmission of sedimented knowledge from previous generations, but it also requires the set of accepted theories to be incessantly put in doubt!
A rigorous and methodologically conducted doubting that preserves past science but also mercilessly questions the validity of its axioms, of its basic constructs and of all from them derived theories, always daring to launch and test new hypotheses, is the innermost engine of geniality!
Corollary is that every science, as well as all types of knowledge may only be provisional, because it will never be given to any human being the smallest amount of absolute knowledge .
The myth of Adam and Eve and the seduction by the serpent , which lead them to taste the forbidden fruit of the tree of wisdom, seems to be an interesting allegory of this human limitation: we will be forever unhappy if we take even only one among our truths for absolute. All that any human being may come to know concerns his or her finite world. Absolute and perfection does not definetely belong to our lives and we will never reach them.
But one might ask whether doubt is so essential only in the realm of science.
We will try to answer this question in an upcoming post.
At what point could the first human set aside the mythological worldview and begin to ask their surroundings with a new look that would lead to some kind of scientific (or pre-scientific) way of thinking?
Certainly only after the appearance of the human ability to doubt so called 'well established truths'.
While one accepts blindly taught data as unquestionable truths, it remains impossible to build new hypotheses, and without such people can only imitate, as monkeys do, what is brought to them by others as 'ready truths'. Shouldn't we regard this as the actual start of the Homo sapiens species: the moment in which a first humanoid ape acquired the ability to doubt?
Whenever someone conceived the Sun as a god from which the Moon born every sunset, and taught this dogmatically to following generations, this might not be regarded even as a pre-scientific assertion! People might repeat that belief forever but, strictly speaking, this may not be regarded as an expression of their true act of thinking! A person who is not able to doubt, only mimicks other's thoughts (like apes in a zoo do when seeing children's gestures) but he or she does not think by him or herself. The naive expression "he or she acts according to his/her own thoughts", commonly used, contains an evident tautology, since people are not exercising the faculty of thinking when they merely repeat other's ideas!
Obviously, the progress of scientific knowledge always requires the accumulation and rigorous transmission of knowledge to further generations, and almost as a truism it must be said that such may never cease.
Copernicus has been capable of realizing his immense leap from the Ptolemaic system to the heliocentric one only after doubting the then absolute dogma that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo, while trying to demonstrate this with his telescope, was forced to remain silent under death penalty through fire by those mighty, demoniac inquisitors .
Newton after seriously doubting that Aristotelian physics could really be the best description of the world, was able to build his magnificent theory of gravitation .
The greater the ability to put previously acquired knowledge into a coherent doubt, the greatest the genius of a scientist.
Albert Einstein, after doubting radically his predecessors' systems, has been able to surpass them all with his Theories of Relativity, which we, laypeople, would like to once and for all understand, but hardly can... A common complain expressed regarding our compprehension of Quantum Physics, String Theory, of Black Holes, the Higgs boson, etc., etc..
And beware that all these strange concepts, belonging to Contemporary Physics, long ago invaded our daily lives. Whether we like it or not, a whole myriad of hightech gadgets used in our everyday life makes use of them.
Yes, to doubt about these subjects is a task for experts!
It is not difficult to deduce that, for science to keep advancing, it needs not only the transmission of sedimented knowledge from previous generations, but it also requires the set of accepted theories to be incessantly put in doubt!
A rigorous and methodologically conducted doubting that preserves past science but also mercilessly questions the validity of its axioms, of its basic constructs and of all from them derived theories, always daring to launch and test new hypotheses, is the innermost engine of geniality!
Corollary is that every science, as well as all types of knowledge may only be provisional, because it will never be given to any human being the smallest amount of absolute knowledge .
The myth of Adam and Eve and the seduction by the serpent , which lead them to taste the forbidden fruit of the tree of wisdom, seems to be an interesting allegory of this human limitation: we will be forever unhappy if we take even only one among our truths for absolute. All that any human being may come to know concerns his or her finite world. Absolute and perfection does not definetely belong to our lives and we will never reach them.
But one might ask whether doubt is so essential only in the realm of science.
We will try to answer this question in an upcoming post.
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