Belief v. Science

April 1, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

In the second century AD it was obvious to sky-watchers that planets did not move in a consistent straight line across the sky, but it was also unarguable that the earth was the center of the universe. Ptolemy used epicycles to explain this retrograde motion, and gave science the justification for its pre-conceived ideas that would last for a millennia and a half. Never mind that this required a condition never before observed in nature–that an object could orbit around nothing while the nothing orbited around something. This convoluted solution was necessary, because the alternative, simpler solution, that the earth moved around the sun, was at that time chimerical. This demonstrates not only that observation can be strongly subservient to pre-conceived ideas, but also that rational, “scientific” support for beliefs, even untrue ones, can and will be found, if people simply want to believe them enough.

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