The Birth Pains of Science

Maybe it started only by a casual glance, a chance encounter, or even a formal introduction, but the chemistry was there. Perhaps the romance took only days or weeks, or possibly it took years. The courting may have occurred unconsciously at first, or the progress was slow, but as feelings were nurtured, the embers that seemed at times to almost go out suddenly burst into flames. Two rings, two vows and the two became one, resulting in time in birth pains and delivery of a new person.

The romance between two people is not unlike the progress of science. An idea in someone's head brought on by a casual glance at something, or a chance encounter as when an apple falls from a tree, or a formal introduction in a classroom setting starts the idea growing and over time produces a scientific concept and birth of a theory.

But not unlike a pregnancy and birthing experience, scientific products of conception do not always result in something viable. Sometimes the idea is purposely aborted, or naturally miscarries, or simply dies much later in the scientific womb, resulting in a stillbirth. Occasionally a delivery becomes obstructed and requires a Caesarean section to be performed by a doctor. This occasionally happens in science. One person originates an idea, and someone else brings it to completion. Then, again, a real delivery may bring forth what appears to be a beautiful, healthy baby, only to discover later that a cardiac malformation will cut the life short unless corrected surgically. Sometimes this happens in science. What may appear at first to be a beautiful, new scientific idea will die unless major changes are made as, in real life a cardiac malformation is surgically corrected. In this way a scientific paradigm, or theory, is altered to fit the new data as more is learned about a given topic. However, some people, even scientists, become so enamored with their paradigms that they refuse to change or give them up just like some folks who still believe in a flat Earth. A preconceived idea must never be chosen over what is demonstrated to be real. To quote Niles Eldredge: "Repeated failure to confirm predicted observations means we have to abandon an idea no matter how fondly we cherish it, or how earnestly we may wish to believe it is true." Again, when a birthing experience produces a perfect baby, the birthing process is almost always painful. This is how it often is in science. Even when a new scientific idea finally becomes accepted in the scientific community, its initial delivery is often associated with much psychological pain and trauma borne by the originator. Occasionally, in life or science, twins, triplets, or quadruplets are delivered with what appears to be minimal effort or pain. Some scientific theories are even adopted for someone else to raise.

Through the course of history there have been many brilliant men who tried to explain natural phenomena. Unfortunately, at first they did not use testing methods, which would either prove or disprove their explanations of how something might look or work. As a result, many false explanations became impregnated in the minds of additional wise men and were handed down generation after generation with no one daring to question the truth of what they had been taught. This produced many false paradigms, some of which lasted for thousands of years. Webster's II College Dictionary defines a paradigm as "A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, esp. in an intellectual discipline." A paradigm is similar to a scientific hypothesis or even a theory. Think of them as visualizing something before it's fully understood. The early Greeks proposed many mathematical and scientific paradigms, some of which have survived and some of which have been discarded.

Aristotle, (384 to 322 BCE) a Greek philosopher, taught that there were four Earthly elements: Earth, air, fire, and water. He believed that all celestial bodies were composed of a fifth element called aither. Aristotle considered aither to be a perfect substance. And because he believed that every heavenly body from the moon and outward away from Earth was composed of the perfect element aither, they therefore had to be perfect. He taught that they were perfectly round and traveled in perfect circles. In the arena of physics, Aristotle taught that heavier bodies would fall faster than lighter bodies as long as they had the same shape. About this time the dominant school of Greek mathematical astronomers taught that the Earth was stationary, located at the center of the universe, and that all heavenly bodies beyond the Earth were each attached to consecutively larger transparent, crystalline spheres that moved around the Earth, producing day and night. The moon was attached to the first crystalline sphere; the next contained the sun, followed by five consecutive spheres containing the five planets known to them. Altogether, these teachings prevailed for about 2,000 years, until Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton made their debut on the scientific scene.

These paradigms were further bolstered by Claudius Ptolemy (150 CE). His mathematical calculations seemed to confirm the ancient Greek teachings. Ptolemy's mathematical and astronomical writings, thirteen volumes in all, were preserved by the Arabs and became known as the Almagest, meaning "the greatest." In one volume, Ptolemy said that the Earth was stationary and the center of the universe (geocentrism). Like Aristotle, he thought that the moon, sun, and planets moved around the centrally placed Earth along with the stars. He believed the stars to be points of light attached to a concave dome. Ptolemy noted that the various planets moved at different speeds and sometimes seemed to stop and move backward against the backdrop of the distant stars. Ptolemy worked out an elaborate number of epicycles and equents, to mathematically predict where the planets would be at a given time. His paradigm lasted more than 1,200 years.

Aristotle's teachings reached their acme about 1,500 years after his death when Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) introduced them again into Western thought in 1266 in his Summa Theologica. He was so successful in this reintroduction of Aristotle and Ptolemy that their paradigms of "how the heavens go" and other concepts dominated Western teaching for about three centuries. In the minds of so-called educated elite and those in authority, this notion controlled their thinking so much that any alternate approach to this cosmology or other...