| I had a fascinating discussion with an ex trucker in Spain (who after an injury worked selling souvenirs in the old windmills where Don Quijote had once jousted according to Cervantes' book). When he heard I was a physicist, he apologized in advance for being such a tool ... and then admitted that he thought the earth rotating around the sun was a mistake. He saw the sunrise every morning, always in the East, move around ... and then set in the West. Plus, wouldn't we feel the speed, or even disintegrate if we travelled so fast around the sun? It was the first time I had encountered somebody who didn't think heliocentrism was possible, let alone other cosmological models. I paused before answering ... but then realized the man was right. What evidence did he have that contradicted a sun rotating around the sun? He only studied until age 12. He never had a Foucault pendulum. And even if he had had one, the fixed stars idea and the earth's rotation is not the only interpretation. I asked ... what about the astronauts who have been up there? Surely they must have seen the earth rotating. He was unconvinced. Things seem to rotate when you are very high as a result of vertigo. Could that be the explanation? What about the great speed of the earth he insisted? Wouldn't we feel that? [nobody had ever explained that to him, including his son who was an engineer] I realized that this man was much more of a scientist than his peers who blindly believe what they are told in school: "the earth rotates around the sun". But ask them a deeper question: What is the evidence? Could the evidence be interpreted otherwise? Are we fooling ourselves (as is very common in science)? Of course the answer to these questions is child's play for most technical people. There is a ton of evidence. But are the 3/4s aware of it? or do they just parrot the accepted wisdom. The man turned out to be very smart, having learned the names of all his souvenirs in Korean, Japanese, German, French ... and having strong opinions about the dogmatism that religion blindly accepts. So it's possible that in that 20% of "non believers" there are true scientists (or Quixotes!) who refuse to believe what they are told before seeing credible experimental evidence that they can reason deeply about. |