I really liked this article from Charlie Brooker of “The Guardian“.
In it, he succinctly and effectively expresses my own views on the subject of reality vs. fantasy and folks’ propensity to eschew the former for the latter no matter the cost.
I really liked this article from Charlie Brooker of “The Guardian“.
In it, he succinctly and effectively expresses my own views on the subject of reality vs. fantasy and folks’ propensity to eschew the former for the latter no matter the cost.
Did science tell Voltaire (sp) the truth when the list of the elements in his day had between 30 and 40 items on it (I forget what the exact count was back then) and one of those ‘elements’ was sodium chloride?
Keep in mind that Voltaire lived in the eighteenth century and that “the state of the art” for science at that time had only begun to get it’s head above the murk that we know as the dark ages.
I’m not familiar with Voltaire’s involvement with the periodic table, but since it is not static, and not afraid to correct itself the scientific method has allowed the periodic table to grow and the elements within it to be corrected (and predicted!) so that we have the table as we know it today. With more brilliant people and more research, who knows if the table will look even more different another hundred years from now.
This all is juxtaposed against anything that we are unable to test, to evaluate and to reconsider in the light of new knowledge. Which remains forever frozen in the wasteland that is made by “you may not think about this”.