Regardless of centuries of discovery, many prefer hearsay to science-say.
Having been to the moon, circled it, and even landed and driven upon it, humans can say with some considerable certainty that it’s a desolate place, void of both a life-sustaining atmosphere and a population of multicellular indigenous life-forms. Maybe, somehow in some crater, the moon houses bacteria or viruses, but that possibility remains a mere speculation based on such scant evidence as a Russian cosmonaut’s claim of finding bacteria of unknown origin on the hull of the International Space Station.* Shame, isn’t it. All that speculation for centuries about moon men and all those early science fiction movies with an indigenous race of creatures like H. G. Wells’ Selenites of First Men in the Moon. All for naught. But the speculation has been fun, and maybe it was a centuries-long buildup of expectation that motivated Goddard and other rocket scientists to tweak their inventions toward practicality and discovery. Today, we search for life on Mars, and we continue to search the heavens for planets in the Goldilocks zones of other star systems.
Yes, we’ve been at this life-on-other-worlds speculation for centuries, at least since 1638 to be precise when John Wilkins published The Discovery of a World in the Moone. And Wilkins admits he was not the first to speculate about life “out there,” particularly on the moon: “Many ancient Philosophers of the better note, have formerly defended this assertion, which I have here laid downe….”** Imagine. A seventeenth century Englishman pondered whether or not there was life elsewhere. And this within a decade of Galileo’s house arrest by the Inquisition for simply pointing out that Earth orbits the Sun. Talk about political incorrectness; it was also 54 years before the Salem Witch Trials. Saying or publishing something unacceptable could get one torched in those days.
Nevertheless, Wilkins boldly offered his speculation in 13 propositions. It’s his first proposition that might strike us as applicable to our times. “That the strangenesse of this opinion is no sufficient reason why it should be rejected, because other certaine truths have beene formerly esteemed ridiculous, and great absurdities entertained by common consent.” Go ahead; speculate; you might be on to something. In other words, go ahead; say it; it doesn’t matter how preposterous or unsubstantiated your statement is; just say it. Hey, maybe someone will prove you to be correct, just as Galileo proved Copernicus and Columbus proved Eratosthenes to be correct.
Among Wilkins’s other propositions is “the Moone is a solid” (Proposition 4), the moon has continents and seas (Propositions 7 and 8), and “that tis probable there may be inhabitants in this other World, but of what kinde they are is uncertaine” (Proposition 13).
Although it is true that the “strangenesse” of an opinion is “no sufficient reason why it should be rejected,” it is also true that unsubstantiated opinions are not facts. Often, proponents of strange opinions are usually not taken seriously by their peers if the opinions affect personal beliefs, and definitely they are almost never taken seriously by “authorities”; but there are exceptions. That a plesiosaur swims in Loch Ness or that lights in the sky over Phoenix, Arizona, are alien spacecraft are two examples of unsubstantiated “strangenesse” with a host of believers. And you can probably think of many other examples. Ever see the TV series about “ancient aliens”?
We live in a time when John Wilkins would find not only avid readers, but also a cult of followers for his propositions about the moon. Are we in an age when the stranger the opinion, the more adherents it gathers like some bar magnet in a sea of iron filings?
Here we are approaching fifty years since Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, and we still have people with strange opinions that defy what we have learned not only since the time of Copernicus and then Galileo, but also from the time of Eratosthenes, the guy who gave a rather accurate measurement of Earth’s circumference just by measuring the angles of a couple of widely separated shadows. Fifty years of recent high-tech science backed by centuries of observations and experiments yet still the strangest unsubstantiated ideas persist.
One of those ideas is that Earth is flat, an idea held by people like Mike Hughes, the builder of a rocket he designed to fly 1,800 feet above the Mojave Desert. Hughes insists the round Earth is a disk, rather than an oblate spheroid all those photos and some pretty good mathematicians and scientists have determined.*** Think now. He has invested time and money to rise eighteen hundred feet to prove his world is flat. Is there something in the man’s mind that prevents him from going a bit higher, say, in a commercial jet at 35,000 to 45,000 feet. I think Mike spent tens of thousands of dollars on his project. Airline tickets are cheaper.
Well, as of this writing, Hughes’ effort is on hold. Shame. I really wanted to resolve this round-Earth/flat-Earth thing that has weighed so heavily on so many minds. And maybe Mike Hughes, while he’s up there on some even higher flight path, might be able to resolve the lights-in-the-sky problem. Or maybe he could go to the moon to see whether or not it houses Selenites.
What is it about the contemporary mind that makes it refuse to accept demonstrable realities in favor of speculations run wild. Is it laziness? Is it mere gullibility, as “they” might say, “run wild”? Is there an unjustified hopefulness that all opinions great or small will someday bear the weight of substantiation?
And what in your (or my) brain is analogous? What mere and strange speculation governs belief and behavior while we wait for substantiation? Is it possible that even sophisticated twenty-first century scientists have their own version of a flat Earth? Think “string theory” and "string theorists." There’s no experiment yet that can verify the "theory," but there are many physicists whose careers hang on those strings. Are they like Wilkins or Hughes? Isn’t that ironic: Scientists holding onto a strange opinion in hopes that since other opinions have been verified theirs will someday also be verified.
The narrator of that series on ancient aliens often makes reference to UFO experts and ancient alien researchers, often without naming one specifically—unless it’s Erich Anton Paul von Däniken, author of Chariots of the Gods. Today, there seems to be little danger in speculation that contradicts archaeology, astronomy, physics, geology, and chemistry. Since so many hold the notion that science isn’t ultimately verifiable because scientists have continued to refine what we know on different levels of resolution, no strange opinion is off limits. No Inquisition is around to torch a speculator no matter how unsubstantiated the speculation. For many, a round Earth is just an opinion. Almost anything goes; one just has to propose a strange speculation to get attention, followers, a book, or even a TV program.
Looking for a flat Earth, Selenites, Loch Ness monsters, strings, or ancient aliens? No belief turns speculation into fact.
*Webb, Sam. The Sun. November 28, 2017. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5012312/international-space-station-astronauts-bacteria-not-from-earth/
**Wilkins, John. The Discovery of a World in the Moone. London. Michael Sparl and Edward Forrest, 1638. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19103/19103-h/19103-h.htm
*** http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-flat-earth-rocket-20171122-story,amp.html
Having been to the moon, circled it, and even landed and driven upon it, humans can say with some considerable certainty that it’s a desolate place, void of both a life-sustaining atmosphere and a population of multicellular indigenous life-forms. Maybe, somehow in some crater, the moon houses bacteria or viruses, but that possibility remains a mere speculation based on such scant evidence as a Russian cosmonaut’s claim of finding bacteria of unknown origin on the hull of the International Space Station.* Shame, isn’t it. All that speculation for centuries about moon men and all those early science fiction movies with an indigenous race of creatures like H. G. Wells’ Selenites of First Men in the Moon. All for naught. But the speculation has been fun, and maybe it was a centuries-long buildup of expectation that motivated Goddard and other rocket scientists to tweak their inventions toward practicality and discovery. Today, we search for life on Mars, and we continue to search the heavens for planets in the Goldilocks zones of other star systems.
Yes, we’ve been at this life-on-other-worlds speculation for centuries, at least since 1638 to be precise when John Wilkins published The Discovery of a World in the Moone. And Wilkins admits he was not the first to speculate about life “out there,” particularly on the moon: “Many ancient Philosophers of the better note, have formerly defended this assertion, which I have here laid downe….”** Imagine. A seventeenth century Englishman pondered whether or not there was life elsewhere. And this within a decade of Galileo’s house arrest by the Inquisition for simply pointing out that Earth orbits the Sun. Talk about political incorrectness; it was also 54 years before the Salem Witch Trials. Saying or publishing something unacceptable could get one torched in those days.
Nevertheless, Wilkins boldly offered his speculation in 13 propositions. It’s his first proposition that might strike us as applicable to our times. “That the strangenesse of this opinion is no sufficient reason why it should be rejected, because other certaine truths have beene formerly esteemed ridiculous, and great absurdities entertained by common consent.” Go ahead; speculate; you might be on to something. In other words, go ahead; say it; it doesn’t matter how preposterous or unsubstantiated your statement is; just say it. Hey, maybe someone will prove you to be correct, just as Galileo proved Copernicus and Columbus proved Eratosthenes to be correct.
Among Wilkins’s other propositions is “the Moone is a solid” (Proposition 4), the moon has continents and seas (Propositions 7 and 8), and “that tis probable there may be inhabitants in this other World, but of what kinde they are is uncertaine” (Proposition 13).
Although it is true that the “strangenesse” of an opinion is “no sufficient reason why it should be rejected,” it is also true that unsubstantiated opinions are not facts. Often, proponents of strange opinions are usually not taken seriously by their peers if the opinions affect personal beliefs, and definitely they are almost never taken seriously by “authorities”; but there are exceptions. That a plesiosaur swims in Loch Ness or that lights in the sky over Phoenix, Arizona, are alien spacecraft are two examples of unsubstantiated “strangenesse” with a host of believers. And you can probably think of many other examples. Ever see the TV series about “ancient aliens”?
We live in a time when John Wilkins would find not only avid readers, but also a cult of followers for his propositions about the moon. Are we in an age when the stranger the opinion, the more adherents it gathers like some bar magnet in a sea of iron filings?
Here we are approaching fifty years since Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, and we still have people with strange opinions that defy what we have learned not only since the time of Copernicus and then Galileo, but also from the time of Eratosthenes, the guy who gave a rather accurate measurement of Earth’s circumference just by measuring the angles of a couple of widely separated shadows. Fifty years of recent high-tech science backed by centuries of observations and experiments yet still the strangest unsubstantiated ideas persist.
One of those ideas is that Earth is flat, an idea held by people like Mike Hughes, the builder of a rocket he designed to fly 1,800 feet above the Mojave Desert. Hughes insists the round Earth is a disk, rather than an oblate spheroid all those photos and some pretty good mathematicians and scientists have determined.*** Think now. He has invested time and money to rise eighteen hundred feet to prove his world is flat. Is there something in the man’s mind that prevents him from going a bit higher, say, in a commercial jet at 35,000 to 45,000 feet. I think Mike spent tens of thousands of dollars on his project. Airline tickets are cheaper.
Well, as of this writing, Hughes’ effort is on hold. Shame. I really wanted to resolve this round-Earth/flat-Earth thing that has weighed so heavily on so many minds. And maybe Mike Hughes, while he’s up there on some even higher flight path, might be able to resolve the lights-in-the-sky problem. Or maybe he could go to the moon to see whether or not it houses Selenites.
What is it about the contemporary mind that makes it refuse to accept demonstrable realities in favor of speculations run wild. Is it laziness? Is it mere gullibility, as “they” might say, “run wild”? Is there an unjustified hopefulness that all opinions great or small will someday bear the weight of substantiation?
And what in your (or my) brain is analogous? What mere and strange speculation governs belief and behavior while we wait for substantiation? Is it possible that even sophisticated twenty-first century scientists have their own version of a flat Earth? Think “string theory” and "string theorists." There’s no experiment yet that can verify the "theory," but there are many physicists whose careers hang on those strings. Are they like Wilkins or Hughes? Isn’t that ironic: Scientists holding onto a strange opinion in hopes that since other opinions have been verified theirs will someday also be verified.
The narrator of that series on ancient aliens often makes reference to UFO experts and ancient alien researchers, often without naming one specifically—unless it’s Erich Anton Paul von Däniken, author of Chariots of the Gods. Today, there seems to be little danger in speculation that contradicts archaeology, astronomy, physics, geology, and chemistry. Since so many hold the notion that science isn’t ultimately verifiable because scientists have continued to refine what we know on different levels of resolution, no strange opinion is off limits. No Inquisition is around to torch a speculator no matter how unsubstantiated the speculation. For many, a round Earth is just an opinion. Almost anything goes; one just has to propose a strange speculation to get attention, followers, a book, or even a TV program.
Looking for a flat Earth, Selenites, Loch Ness monsters, strings, or ancient aliens? No belief turns speculation into fact.
*Webb, Sam. The Sun. November 28, 2017. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5012312/international-space-station-astronauts-bacteria-not-from-earth/
**Wilkins, John. The Discovery of a World in the Moone. London. Michael Sparl and Edward Forrest, 1638. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19103/19103-h/19103-h.htm
*** http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-flat-earth-rocket-20171122-story,amp.html
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