Never suggest common sense to people who are raised in ignorance. Too much of a new idea will always be a huge threat to them, though nobody knows why.
It wasn’t common sense at the time. Germ theory wouldn’t exist for another 20 years after Semmelweis’s discovery. His idea of “corpse particles that might turn a living person into a corpse after contact” seemed superstitious and crazy at the time. It was only after germ theory that we learned that these “corpse particles” were in fact germs.
I know I remember seeing a documentary about all this and how surgeons who frequently did autopsies at that time would often cut themselves, develop a fever and die from septic shock, never having learned that they maybe should wash their hands after playing with dead tissue. Germ theory wasn’t even a theory then, because people didn’t have any idea there could be such a thing as germs.
It makes me wonder what would people in the Renaissance or middle ages say, if we were to travel back in time and talk about dinosaurs. I’m sure they’d lock us up as mentally ill. How could there ever have been such a thing as gigantic mega-lizards walking around on earth!
From the micro to the macroscopic it’s funny how we humans always have to learn things very slowly and only after making many incorrect assumptions.
I’m sure of that too. It’s 76 today in the middle of December, where in past years it’s usually been 30. - what could be weird about that? My conclusion from all this earth getting warmer nonsense is, people should ignore it and learn to live with less clothes on.
IMO the common sense part isn’t “oh right of course those are germs”, but following the observation that points to some correlation. They don’t have to know or understand the root cause to at least consider (or accept) that something is wrong.
Quantum Mechanics (QM) makes accurate statements and predictions about a lot of physical experiments.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the theory in especially well-liked, especially among common people. There are a lot of people who think that QM is incorrect, or at least incomplete, simply because it contradicts their intuition.
True, and a lot of assumptions we make are based on sound scientific observation. Though gravity is still just a theory, I defy you to try to float off the ground without some kind of assistance.
Quantum Mechanics offers lots of possibilities so I don’t know how anyone could think it wasn’t “correct,” it isn’t so much worried about correctness as it is about offering ways of observing dynamic relationships. I’m sure it’s always going to seem incomplete.
But that’s a good thing. If everyone considers the status quo as final, no one would research anything. It’s fine to question stuff, if you at least follow scientific methodologies. Just saying “nah, I don’t buy it” and then leaning back doing nothing is just lazy, and not critical thinking.
If Semmelweis’ s theories were correct, it would have meant that many deaths of their patients would have been easily avoidable. So those other doctors could either ridicule the theory and continue living + practicing in ignorance, or accept the theory and also accept that they had (unknowingly) caused the deaths of many of their patients.
I’m not surprised that they chose the route of ridicule. I’m also not surprised that 20 or 30 years later, when the assistants of the old doctors had become the new generation of doctors, that the theory was then more easily accepted.
IT’s the Dunning-Kruger effect - people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria. And they tend to only value the criteria that validate their own points of view. What we really lack is the eagerness to know all sides of an issue and take them into account.
Never suggest common sense to people who are raised in ignorance. Too much of a new idea will always be a huge threat to them, though nobody knows why.
It wasn’t common sense at the time. Germ theory wouldn’t exist for another 20 years after Semmelweis’s discovery. His idea of “corpse particles that might turn a living person into a corpse after contact” seemed superstitious and crazy at the time. It was only after germ theory that we learned that these “corpse particles” were in fact germs.
I know I remember seeing a documentary about all this and how surgeons who frequently did autopsies at that time would often cut themselves, develop a fever and die from septic shock, never having learned that they maybe should wash their hands after playing with dead tissue. Germ theory wasn’t even a theory then, because people didn’t have any idea there could be such a thing as germs.
It makes me wonder what would people in the Renaissance or middle ages say, if we were to travel back in time and talk about dinosaurs. I’m sure they’d lock us up as mentally ill. How could there ever have been such a thing as gigantic mega-lizards walking around on earth!
From the micro to the macroscopic it’s funny how we humans always have to learn things very slowly and only after making many incorrect assumptions.
I’m sure our assumptions about climate will work out fine though
I’m sure of that too. It’s 76 today in the middle of December, where in past years it’s usually been 30. - what could be weird about that? My conclusion from all this earth getting warmer nonsense is, people should ignore it and learn to live with less clothes on.
IMO the common sense part isn’t “oh right of course those are germs”, but following the observation that points to some correlation. They don’t have to know or understand the root cause to at least consider (or accept) that something is wrong.
Well, I’m not so sure about that. Consider this:
Quantum Mechanics (QM) makes accurate statements and predictions about a lot of physical experiments.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the theory in especially well-liked, especially among common people. There are a lot of people who think that QM is incorrect, or at least incomplete, simply because it contradicts their intuition.
True, and a lot of assumptions we make are based on sound scientific observation. Though gravity is still just a theory, I defy you to try to float off the ground without some kind of assistance.
Quantum Mechanics offers lots of possibilities so I don’t know how anyone could think it wasn’t “correct,” it isn’t so much worried about correctness as it is about offering ways of observing dynamic relationships. I’m sure it’s always going to seem incomplete.
But that’s a good thing. If everyone considers the status quo as final, no one would research anything. It’s fine to question stuff, if you at least follow scientific methodologies. Just saying “nah, I don’t buy it” and then leaning back doing nothing is just lazy, and not critical thinking.
That’s the scientific part. Conventional wisdom, on the other hand, is often neither.
If Semmelweis’ s theories were correct, it would have meant that many deaths of their patients would have been easily avoidable. So those other doctors could either ridicule the theory and continue living + practicing in ignorance, or accept the theory and also accept that they had (unknowingly) caused the deaths of many of their patients.
I’m not surprised that they chose the route of ridicule. I’m also not surprised that 20 or 30 years later, when the assistants of the old doctors had become the new generation of doctors, that the theory was then more easily accepted.
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IT’s the Dunning-Kruger effect - people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria. And they tend to only value the criteria that validate their own points of view. What we really lack is the eagerness to know all sides of an issue and take them into account.