Our knowledge diet can have the same effects as our food diets in an affluent “educated” society: We can become fat on accepted “facts” and lazy, our minds apparently satiated with all (we think) we know. “Too bad the ancients didn’t have all the knowledge we have at our disposal,” we think. “Wonder how they managed with minds deprived of the essential knowledge nutriments on which we have grown so wise?”
On 7/4/2018, I published a blog in which I noted the discovery of a distant planet doesn’t amount to much noteworthiness because getting details on that celestial body would remain only a distant and largely unreachable goal. Ross 128 b is very far away by comparison with Earthbound and nearby objects, though in astronomical measurements, it is fairly close by. Now, I feel like one of those people who said heavier-than-air machines would never fly or like someone overweight person discovering a new diet book at the bookstore.
As funding for a complex of telescopes linked as interferometers becomes available, a new technological advance will give us an unprecedented look at the sky, revealing details that were lost in the cruder resolution available today.* So, maybe the discovery of Ross 128 b will, in fact, yield new knowledge of a specific nature, possibly even revealing that the planet can, or even does, support life of some kind.
And that’s not the only “egg on my face.” Because I’m not a paleoanthropologist, I don’t pay very close attention to the up-to-date discoveries made by field researchers—except when such discoveries make the international news or I stumble on one of their professional journals. But paleoanthropological advances are just a stone tool’s or ancient tooth’s discovery away, and such discoveries make me ponder the depth of our hominid and hominin history. The 2005 discovery of Homo naledi, for example,made me realize that hominins might have had some kind of “religion” because the South African cave bones were H. naledi ’s only, possibly—but not assuredly—purposefully emplaced in some sort of burial spot.** Previously, I had dismissed that level of mentality and socialization in organisms outside the lineages of Neanderthals and present-day humans. Now, the discovery in China of stone tools dating to more than two million years ago makes me wonder about my accepting earlier ideas about human development.*** Sure, I knew about chimps and birds using “tools,” but the finding that some predecessor primate chipped away hard stone for a specific purpose in Asia revealed the level of and limitation of my knowledge. I have a suspicion that even the “experts” were dismayed that their pantries of artifacts lacked such tools until 2018.
Apparently, both technology and discovery will continue to humble the proud and bring low those who cling to what they know. The ostensibly ancient site at Meadowcroft near Avella in western Pennsylvania and other such sites around the world should be a lesson that we have much to learn about the distribution of people, their histories, and their ancient itineraries.*** In other words, regardless of how much we think we know, we always seem to discover more.
The point should be clear. We will always be on the cusp of new knowledge, and we can’t take the position that the highly respected and brilliant Albert Michelson seemed to hold in 1894 that “it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice.” Just 11 years later, Einstein published his papers on special relativity, the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and mass-energy equivalence (E = mc^2), all of which put many of Michelson’s “grand underlying principles” in the garbage can.
So, yes, I need to keep an open mind and consider that “most of the grand underlying principles” of any field of knowledge might need some tweaking (or overturning) and that I don’t know what I don’t know. And I guess I should apply that openness to what I don’t know about other people, also. If nothing else comes from having to change one’s mind because of the revelation of something previously unknown, I can learn the lesson that all humans should nourish themselves on a diet of humble pie.
*See among other articles, “Very Large Array” (located at Socorro, NM) on the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s website at https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/VLA/; and articles on the LoFAR Array in Chile, the Murchison Widefield Array in western Australia, and the KAT7 & MeerKAT in Northern Cape, South Africa.
** “Homo naledi: new species of ancient human discovered, claim scientists” and similar articles. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new-species-of-ancient-human-discovered-claim-scientists
***Zimmer, Carl. “Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools Outside Africa,” The New York Times, Science, online at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/science/hominins-tools-china.html and other articles on the discovery.
**** Meadowcroft Rockshelter in numerous online articles and a book, but a good introduction can be found on Wikipedia. The discovery threw into doubt the primacy of the Clovis culture and pushed the settlement of North America back by millennia.
On 7/4/2018, I published a blog in which I noted the discovery of a distant planet doesn’t amount to much noteworthiness because getting details on that celestial body would remain only a distant and largely unreachable goal. Ross 128 b is very far away by comparison with Earthbound and nearby objects, though in astronomical measurements, it is fairly close by. Now, I feel like one of those people who said heavier-than-air machines would never fly or like someone overweight person discovering a new diet book at the bookstore.
As funding for a complex of telescopes linked as interferometers becomes available, a new technological advance will give us an unprecedented look at the sky, revealing details that were lost in the cruder resolution available today.* So, maybe the discovery of Ross 128 b will, in fact, yield new knowledge of a specific nature, possibly even revealing that the planet can, or even does, support life of some kind.
And that’s not the only “egg on my face.” Because I’m not a paleoanthropologist, I don’t pay very close attention to the up-to-date discoveries made by field researchers—except when such discoveries make the international news or I stumble on one of their professional journals. But paleoanthropological advances are just a stone tool’s or ancient tooth’s discovery away, and such discoveries make me ponder the depth of our hominid and hominin history. The 2005 discovery of Homo naledi, for example,made me realize that hominins might have had some kind of “religion” because the South African cave bones were H. naledi ’s only, possibly—but not assuredly—purposefully emplaced in some sort of burial spot.** Previously, I had dismissed that level of mentality and socialization in organisms outside the lineages of Neanderthals and present-day humans. Now, the discovery in China of stone tools dating to more than two million years ago makes me wonder about my accepting earlier ideas about human development.*** Sure, I knew about chimps and birds using “tools,” but the finding that some predecessor primate chipped away hard stone for a specific purpose in Asia revealed the level of and limitation of my knowledge. I have a suspicion that even the “experts” were dismayed that their pantries of artifacts lacked such tools until 2018.
Apparently, both technology and discovery will continue to humble the proud and bring low those who cling to what they know. The ostensibly ancient site at Meadowcroft near Avella in western Pennsylvania and other such sites around the world should be a lesson that we have much to learn about the distribution of people, their histories, and their ancient itineraries.*** In other words, regardless of how much we think we know, we always seem to discover more.
The point should be clear. We will always be on the cusp of new knowledge, and we can’t take the position that the highly respected and brilliant Albert Michelson seemed to hold in 1894 that “it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice.” Just 11 years later, Einstein published his papers on special relativity, the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and mass-energy equivalence (E = mc^2), all of which put many of Michelson’s “grand underlying principles” in the garbage can.
So, yes, I need to keep an open mind and consider that “most of the grand underlying principles” of any field of knowledge might need some tweaking (or overturning) and that I don’t know what I don’t know. And I guess I should apply that openness to what I don’t know about other people, also. If nothing else comes from having to change one’s mind because of the revelation of something previously unknown, I can learn the lesson that all humans should nourish themselves on a diet of humble pie.
*See among other articles, “Very Large Array” (located at Socorro, NM) on the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s website at https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/VLA/; and articles on the LoFAR Array in Chile, the Murchison Widefield Array in western Australia, and the KAT7 & MeerKAT in Northern Cape, South Africa.
** “Homo naledi: new species of ancient human discovered, claim scientists” and similar articles. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new-species-of-ancient-human-discovered-claim-scientists
***Zimmer, Carl. “Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools Outside Africa,” The New York Times, Science, online at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/science/hominins-tools-china.html and other articles on the discovery.
**** Meadowcroft Rockshelter in numerous online articles and a book, but a good introduction can be found on Wikipedia. The discovery threw into doubt the primacy of the Clovis culture and pushed the settlement of North America back by millennia.
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