Wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods
edge.org
edge.org
EDIT: To clarify, using the term "erroneous" under the Kuhnian view (disclaimer, my view), is a bit disingenuous because the criteria under which we are claiming these theories to be wrong did not exist in their historical contexts: on the contrary, some of these theories, such as gravity, happenned to be progressive, brilliant, and in some cases extremely useful as a simplifying framework in the next paradigm. All of the historical and technological ingredients, such as the ability to calculate the speed of light accurately, or Maxwell's equations didn't exist for Newton. Do we call that he missed it an error?
In my opinion, "erroneous" as a term should be reserved for beliefs that were incorrect given existing frameworks: Lamarkian evolution, Einstein's cosmological constant, the postulating of the lumeferious ether, Hilbert's axiomatic program that was disproven in his time by Godel...THESE were erroneous.
It would be like saying in the future when (hypothetically) a more advanced technology comes along and computes a totally revolutionary and paradigm-shifting scientific framework that our views in 2010 are "erroneous". Probably a little extreme.
One rather relevant example from a recent new scientist that, in rats, overweight dad rats had offspring who more likely to get diabetes.
I get the impression it's early days with all this stuff, but it's going to be interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051026090636.ht...
This is an oversimplification, but imagine you have a sweater that you dye bright green. You then unravel it and use part of the yarn, along with yarn from another sweater, to knit a new sweater. Some of the new sweater will have the same physical change, the bright green dye, that the old sweater had.
Sure, but only cell#1 has the actual molecules from the parents.
Cell division requires that the DNA be replicated. What surprises me is that the replication step (apparently) preserves methylation. (If it didn't, there would be no observable epigenetic effect in the organism).
i.e. from an information perspective, the bits encoded in the DNA aren't don't just come from the sequence of bases, but also "out of band" data.
Methylation of DNA tends to persist through cell division because there are enzymes which approximately copy over the methylation patterns during DNA replication. If some epigenetic changes happen in sperm or eggs, then some of this may be carried over to offspring. You're right that we're still in the early days of mapping this out and understanding it. Molecular biology is a crazy mess that makes the worst spaghetti code look downright reasonable. That's evolution for you....
In it the authors discuss the evolution of the eukaryotic cell: a multi-part cell that evolved due to penetration or symbiosis of multiple organisms. Pretty much all complex life evolved out of eukaryotic cells. In particular the mitochondria that power your cells did not evolve from the same stuff that the rest of your cells did -- they were an addition later on.
Likewise, most of the genetic diff between us and Chimpanzees (or for that matter, blue green algae) are from external sources -- viruses and 'parasites'.
For that matter, 90% of the cells in your body are not genetically yours -- they are other microbes (though these account for only 10% of your body mass). If you are purged of these cells, you die. This lack of microbial transfer was one of the reasons suggested for why infant mortality was so high in the years when babies were isolated from their mothers and other human contact upon birth.
Fairly sure that's the just a progressive step towards Einstein's model.
It is difficult to define wrong in a scientific context since everything is just model that matches observations. Of course, as more observations come, models will be naturally disproved. That doesn't mean they were wrong for the entirety of their existence which I think was your point, but you haven't applied it to the examples you raised.
In the example of ether, It was believed to be permeate all matter and the medium for light to travel through. It explained all observations at that time until the Michelson-Morley experiment which settled it.
"Among cognitive psychologists, there is widespread agreement that people learn best when they are actively engaged with a topic, have to actively problem solve, as we would put it 'construct meaning.' Yet, among individuals young and old, all over the world, there is a view that is incredibly difficult to dislodge. To wit: Education involves a transmission of knowledge/information from someone who is bigger and older (often called 'the sage on the stage') to someone who is shorter, younger, and lacks that knowledge/information. No matter how many constructivist examples and arguments are marshaled, this view — which I consider a misconception — bounces back. And it seems to be held equally by young and old, by individuals who succeeded in school as well as by individuals who failed miserably.
Now this is not a scientific misconception in the sense of flat earth or six days of creation, but it is an example of a conception that is extraordinarily robust, even though almost no one who has studied cognition seriously believes it hold water.
Let me take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your many contributions to our current thinking."
For more information on this, you should probably look at what Seymour Papert has been doing in Maine lately.
In other words, he's saying Y follows from X, so if you don't accept Y then you don't believe X. It's the same rhetorical device as saying, "Nobody cares about civil liberties anymore [because George Bush got re-elected]," or "I guess nobody else here loves his country [because I'm the only one who went to the Tea Party rally last weekend]."
It's always easier to stick up for a vague but popular concept (such as liberty, love of country, or active, engaged learning) than to argue in favor of the controversial concrete policies you think follow from it.
"Education involves a transmission of knowledge/information from someone who is bigger and older"
These seem mostly orthogonal to me... the latter just being a generalization of (anecdotal) experience.
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1147968
If you allow variation in this area you get Elliptical/Hyperbolic geometries - but these extend Euclidean Geometry, they don't invalidate it.
I seem to recall (I could well be wrong) that the calculations for the Voyager space probes are all done using Newtonian mechanics. For something to be wrong implies to me that it is of no utility - which clearly isn't the case with Newtons work.
When you model some physical system you do it with and end in mind and a lot of assumptions have to be made (e.g. that gas flow is non-turbulent, heat flow is uniform) which are all wrong in some sense because reality isn't like that but if you didn't make these simplifying assumptions then you'd never get anything done.
Mathematical models aren't reality - they are an attempt to create structures that allow us to explain and predict and the assumptions underlying the mappings between these structures and reality are just as important as the contents of the theories themselves. It's possible to model the same system in umpteen different ways - indeed as there is no all encompassing theory-of-absolutely-everything you have to make some important decisions when you model something as to what is relevant. Trying to model plate tectonics in terms of string theory is unlikely to get you very far - that doesn't make string theory "wrong".
Columbus was not turned down at first because people believed he'd fall off the edge of the Earth; they knew he could not have possibly reached Asia, the distance was too great. It was only pure luck (finding America) that saved him. A venture capitalist in those times would have been rational not to buy into the expedition.
As for geocentrism, that has some merits. But note that Ptolemy and his followers were really hindered by a lack of good astronomical data. Using methods of those times, an epicyclical model of the planets was pretty accurate and could have been refined further. The model of Copernicus was deemed superior because it needed fewer epicycles to make the math right. The breakthrough came only after Kepler got the very accurate Huygens observations (taken over 20 years); after he had enough datapoints, he could come up with his famous laws.
And so, let's not blame the Ancients right away. They were not as ignorant as we may believe.
According to the best contemporary data, the investment would have been highly speculative (as all voyages across the sea), but not insanely so.
As you, and relativity, say - it's not wrong to choose an arbitrary fixed point.
>it took a long time before anyone came up with anything that could measure [stellar parallax]
Indeed, the Pythagoreans assumed terrestrial motion (according to Copernicus) just as others assumed opposite. Neither assumption is bad, neither is worse given that there was no obtainable evidence to support either position at the time.
Wikipedia:
> The Flat Earth model is a view that the Earth's shape is a flat plane or disk. Most pre-modern cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including ancient Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Ancient Near East until the Hellenistic period, Ancient India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) and China until the 17th century. It was also typically held in the cultures of the New World until the time of European contact, and a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies.[1] The paradigm of a spherical Earth was developed in ancient Greek astronomy, beginning with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.[2][3][4][5] The misconception that educated people at the time of Columbus believed in a flat Earth has been referred to as "The Myth of the Flat Earth".[6] In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history
Can you give your evidence for this assertion?
I think this is a modern interpretation as an attempt to demonstrate that we are somehow advanced beings now. IMO the person of 8000 years ago was probably as capable as the modern man, given the same nutrition and with the same access to reference works and technology I don't think we would outshine them generally. Quite possibly the opposite.
EDIT: my mind is totally blown by this; it put together some pieces of general relativity in a new way for me today. thanks HN!
See "equivalence principle".
I never really understood this part. General relativity gives us one explanation of gravity (mass curves space-time), while quantum theory tells us that gravity arises from the exchange of particles. So... how do we reconcile? I imagine if we ever discover a unified theory, it'll manage to deal with that. But how does say string theory (for lack of other examples) reconcile these two views?
...or is it something as simple as the exchange of particles causes the warping of space >.>
No, it doesn't. That statement is wrong on two levels:
1) We don't have a confirmed quantum theory of gravity
2) In quantum field theories in general it's not really accurate to say that "[forces] arise from the exchange of particles". In some QFTs, in some situations, you can perform a perturbative expansion which maps onto the Feynman diagram view of particle exchange, but that's not universally possible. They really are quantum _field_ theories, not quantum particle theories.
The first definition is tautological: First, you define a curved space, accounting for gravitational forces such that a small object will follow a certain geodesic. Then, you say that since it does indeed follow said geodesic in that geometry without deviation, gravity is not a force. Well of course not!
With the same same hand-wavy argument, you could define the curvature of space based on electromagnetic field strength, for example, and argue that electromagnetism is not a force.
>With the same same hand-wavy argument, you could define the curvature of space based on electromagnetic field strength, for example, and argue that electromagnetism is not a force.
No. You're very wrong here. You (irritatingly) seem to think that because you have only been exposed to popularized hand-wavy arguments, that physicists necessarily rely on them.
The vast majority of possible forces (including Newtonian gravity and electromagnetism) can not be explained the way gravity is explained. Your confusion probably comes from not understanding how much smaller the space of possible geometries is than the space of possible forces.
In fact, the stunningly beautiful thing about gravity is that it can be derived from knowing only that it is a geometric effect and obeys a few symmetries. Even if you relax some of these symmetries (e.g. Brans-Dicke theory) the resulting parameterizable space of possible geometries is very restricted.
Not really so much, since different objects couple to electromagnetism differently based on their charge. All objects follow the same geodesics in general relativity.
As far as we know .. I'm trying to imagine particles that do not [Higgs-teflon engage] I'm assuming they would be extra-dimensional (by definition when considering geodesics).
If you decouple particles from the Higgs field where do they go.
When I walk I push the earth around, and drag the universe along with it a little.
Here's a way of thinking about what's going on.
Consider a large mass, like the Earth. That mass curves spacetime in the vicinity of the Earth. A small object, like a satellite, simply moves completely freely in a "straight line" (i.e., geodesic path) according to that curved geometry. The curved geometry is such that those geodesics are just the satellite orbits that we see. In other words, the satellite isn't affected by any "force", it's just moving in a straight line in a geometry that happens to be curved, so we see it doing circles around the Earth.
It's exceedingly neat: in John Wheeler's great phrase, matter tells spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells matter how to move. No forces required! Of course, after the fact you can tack on a notion of "force", but it's in no way fundamental.
Same thing is going on with projectile motion here on Earth.
Once you internalize this point of view, the statement about holding your arm in place becomes a lot clearer. The "natural" force-free thing your arm wants to do is to move along geodesics of spacetime, which means falling toward the Earth at an acceleration of g. But if we exert a (muscular) force to keep it up, then we can hold it in place. In short, in this point of view, forces are things which cause deviations from geodesic motion.
But, as you say, I haven't seen better.
Another way of looking at it is to imagine that you are standing in an elevator in space that is accelerating with the speed of 1g. That scenario will feel exactly the same as if that elevator was standing still on the surface of the Earth, but it's more clear that the elevator is pushing you, and not the other way around.
Wouldn't this be a pay decrease?
x * 1.2 = y
y * 0.8 < x
Not that anyone here needs an explanation :)
base salary: $100
$100 * 1.2 = $120
$120 * (1.2 * .8) = $115.2
S2 = S0 * (100+p)/100 * (100-p)/100
[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28100%2Bp%29%2F100+*+%...
I think we are all too fast to label old theories "wrong" and with this we weaken the science of today — people say — with some justification from the facts as given to them — that since the old "right" is now "wrong" the "right" of today might be also tainted. I do not believe this — today's "right" is just fine, because yesterday's "wrong" was also much more nuanced "more right" that we are often led to believe.
Here is a good summary: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/wrong1.html
I believe this is actually true. It's called epigenetics, & there was a great StuffYouShouldKnow Podcast about it: http://castroller.com/podcasts/StuffYouShould/1687893-Can%20...
For a more popular example, two thousand years ago many people thought the earth was round based on a wide range of evidence. They even calculated the size of the earth with a fair amount of precision. A more striking example a scurvy cure was found, then lost and then found again over hundreds of years. http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
Perhaps people were indeed dumb and ignorant. If no one told you all of these things since birth, would you have any idea that the earth goes around the moon. Supposing you are a knight, a farmer, a priest, a whatever, rather than someone dedicating yourself to the study of the stars, and no one told you ever that the earth goes around the sun, or even moves, would you ever find out or know at all and would you not believe the priest or whoever seems to know about the subject.
It is not that people are dumb. They just do not know. A doctor can tell me whatever he likes that sounds reasonable and as I would have no option I would believe him.
And when you start taking about actual numbers you find that there are over a billion people that can't read living in the world today. Heck, due to the population increase there are probably more people in the world today that believe the world is flat than did in the 300 BC and there pictures of the thing.
It doesn't. Frames of reference - postmodernism for physicists.
(I don't understand it, but I like it).
I did not know that. How significant is the difference?
> Among cognitive psychologists, there is widespread agreement that people learn best when they are actively engaged with a topic, have to actively problem solve, as we would put it 'construct meaning.' Yet, among individuals young and old, all over the world, there is a view that is incredibly difficult to dislodge. To wit: Education involves a transmission of knowledge/information from someone who is bigger and older (often called 'the sage on the stage') to someone who is shorter, younger, and lacks that knowledge/information. No matter how many constructivist examples and arguments are marshaled, this view — which I consider a misconception — bounces back. And it seems to be held equally by young and old, by individuals who succeeded in school as well as by individuals who failed miserably.
-- Luminiferous ether: that light propagates via the "ether" medium -- "Bad air" theory of infectious diseases (which is still held in many countries) -- "Stress causes ulcers" -- Leprosy is contagious -- The belief that first five (or two, or three) years of a child's life determine his/her personality in adulthood. This is one is still widely held and accepted.
Oh, and just for kicks: 'Intelligent Design' and its variants. :-)
And just to throw it out: What will it take to convince that Global Warming / Climate Change is real? This is perhaps one of the leading least-understood / most controversial beliefs of our times.
These are still commonly practiced yet are scientifically proven no more effective than a placebo.
At least, many of those "beliefs" weren't actually beliefs, but scientific theories that worked very well but were later improved. It's the case of Newtonian gravitational force.
Not at all. At least, not if you are interested in epistemology. In fact, one common definition of knowledge is "justified true belief." Cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justified_true_belief
A) "Justified true belief" as the criterion for knowledge is not common in epistemology, contra the initial comment;
b) "Scientific belief" is an odd term given that you either have "knowledge" or you have "false beliefs" based on best available science.
I hope not. The definition of "scientific belief" is belief in something supported by a scientific method. Put another way formally and rigorously established based on agreed axioms.
Being a scientist doesn't make your belief that you're Imhotep reincarnated a scientific belief.
How many examples on the OP did you read? How many of those examples were supported by a scientific method? (Probably some, but not all.) I think my definition better suits the context, quibbling aside.
Personally I think it would be truly naive to imagine that we now have what you call "knowledge" as opposed to having in science the best (based on consensus) available description of the universe. If you wish to call the standard model "false belief" then I can go with that but it seems a bit overly fussy.
We should understand that we take our axioms and build on them and measure against them but that we need to adjust those axioms as evidence comes to light.
Axioms, many scientist fail to realise, are beliefs without scientific justification. Not only is physics built on them but the mathematics we use to build our physics and the logic that we use to support our mathematics are built on them too. What is more Godel shows us that we can't prove that logic to be complete and consistent from within.
Yes Pyrrho is my hero but I think Carneades went a bit far.
Practically however the NFP formulation of JTB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justified_true_belief) leaves us without a usable word for "knowledge".
No, "belief" and "evidence" are orthogonal.
In which case no evidence exists for us.