1401
Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology / Re: When during human evolution did the first scientist appear?
« on: 22/10/2015 23:59:10 »
In 1983 I watched a gorilla at Chessington Zoo discover the principle of universal gravitation. He had two apples, one considerably larger than the other, one in each hand. He dropped them and noticed that they hit the ground at the same time. He repeated the test, twice, then changed hands and did it again. Perfect null experimental technique: observe, repeat, change one parameter.
On the presumption that gorillas don't read books or have much of an oral tradition of scientific knowledge, this chap discovered, by the application of best scientific practice and in the space of five minutes, what took humans several million years and and a fair bit of bloodshed. Indeed there is no historical evidence that Galileo actually did his "leaning tower" experiment, and if you read some of the bizarre submissions to this forum, it's quite clear that very few humans appreciate even the simplest principles of scientific investigation. Of course the gorilla didn't have to shake off centuries of superstition and the threat of excommunication, which gave him a huge advantage over Bruno et al.
Having seen birds, rats and chimpanzees deduce causal relationships from observation, and having marvelled at the gullibility of humans (including verbatim acceptance of garbage like Genesis) for many years, I fear that scientific thought in homo sapiens is something of a rarity compared with other species. Worse: when it appears, the herd generally tries to stamp it out, always preferring consensus and superstition to the demonstrable truth - unlike blue tits.
On the presumption that gorillas don't read books or have much of an oral tradition of scientific knowledge, this chap discovered, by the application of best scientific practice and in the space of five minutes, what took humans several million years and and a fair bit of bloodshed. Indeed there is no historical evidence that Galileo actually did his "leaning tower" experiment, and if you read some of the bizarre submissions to this forum, it's quite clear that very few humans appreciate even the simplest principles of scientific investigation. Of course the gorilla didn't have to shake off centuries of superstition and the threat of excommunication, which gave him a huge advantage over Bruno et al.
Having seen birds, rats and chimpanzees deduce causal relationships from observation, and having marvelled at the gullibility of humans (including verbatim acceptance of garbage like Genesis) for many years, I fear that scientific thought in homo sapiens is something of a rarity compared with other species. Worse: when it appears, the herd generally tries to stamp it out, always preferring consensus and superstition to the demonstrable truth - unlike blue tits.
The following users thanked this post: Ophiolite