Today, studying science, such as physics at school or the university, it seems that the process of cognition went smoothly, beautifully, wisely and that picture of the world, as we see it today, is the result of discoveries, hypotheses, experiments that the rest of the scientific community perceived “with a bang “.
Therefore, today, most people who are not deeply familiar with the history of science, have a blind faith in the infallibility of science and scientists. One may think that: “If science has already been able to come to the point where it is now, with all the development of technology, medicine, etc., then scientists know exactly what they are talking about.”
But let’s take a look at a few historical examples showing that the development of science did not go so smoothly, and even the great scientists had many misconceptions, which they defended no less persistently than their beliefs.
Here are some examples:
L. Boltzmann (1844-1906) – the great physicist, founder of statistical mechanics and the kinetic theory of gases. Many people know him and heard about his theories – there is no physics textbook where his name won’t appear. But few people know that during his lifetime his theories were “not popular” (! – this concept should be absent from science at all) and “false scientific.” He ended his life by suicide, unable to withstand persecution by other great scientists, such as Mach (his name today denotes the speed of sound) and Thomson (Lord Kelvin, whose name today means absolute temperature).
By the way, the same Thomson (Lord Kelvin 1824-1907) was a fierce opponent of the theory of evolution! Based on the calculation of the age of the Sun (20-40 million years), in which, in his opinion, the chemical processes of combustion, which are a source of energy, occur, Thomson pointed out the lack of historical time for the evolution of the animal world to lead to a modern state.
At that time (the second half of the 19th century), nothing was known about the nuclear fusion, which gives energy to the sun (the age of the sun is actually ~5 billion years). And Thomson, on the basis of fundamentally incorrect assumptions, came to erroneous conclusions, on the basis of which he argued that the theory of evolution is “not scientific”!
This is one of the most striking examples, showing how the lack of knowledge in one of the areas of physics led to accusations of the “non-scientific” theory in biology.
Is the situation different today?
Absolutely not. Today, in the same manner as 50, 100 or 200 years ago, science continues to intensively develop, discover new laws and explain previously inexplicable phenomena. If 100 years ago, someone had said that a particle could pass through a wall (potential barrier), they would have been laughed at, and today this phenomenon (tunneling) is used intensively in technology. Now, like 100 years ago, scientists are the same human beings, with their mistakes, errors, characters… And looking back, it is easy to see that what is currently inexplicable, not understandable and “not scientific” – will be explained tomorrow based on new research, and will become natural and understandable. It is only necessary never to stop asking questions and looking for the answers.
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