I want to start off with small anecdotes about two revolutionary thinkers I admire: Johannes Kepler & Charles Darwin.
My interest in the universe goes back to when I was 8-9 years old, and I laid my hands on "The Universe" from the Childcraft series.I first came across the notions of Ptolemy of a geocentric universe. I disliked him in those days, thinking what a fool he was. That has changed since I grew up, and realized he was merely trying to make sense of what he saw, and did it better than anyone else in his time. Those notions, as I saw on the next page in the book, were challenged by Nicolaus Copernicus over a millennium later, at the risk of being put to death by the church who preferred to waddle in their ignorance. He was a hero who started a revolution that spawned generations of scientific thinkers who challenged the dogma of the authorities & slowly took the world out of the dark ages. One of those thinkers was Johannes Kepler, who furthered Copernicus' heliocentric model. I only learnt of Kepler's discovery of planetary motion in the book, but about the background much later from Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Kepler was a deeply religious man, and very fond of mathematics. His idea of the Creator was that of the ultimate mathematician, who had designed the universe with grand equations which ruled all the objects in the universe. One of his earlier works about planetary motion involved the concept of concentric polyhedrons that governed the motion of the earth & the other 5 known planets at that time. He passionately persisted on this theory for several years. The idea was in sync with his belief in the celestial mathematician and he believed with all his heart to be true. But to a scientist, mere belief isn't satisfactory. He worked for years to fit this model with observations & calculations of motion, but to no avail. He struggled with it for years until at the crossroads, he decided to let go & pursue new possibilities. And after this he discovered that the sun was not the sole center for a planet's orbit, but was one of two focii, as the planetary orbits were elliptical. And this discovery became a monumental leap in the understanding of planetary motion.
When Charles Darwin set out on the HMS Beagle he was definitely not being guided by the devil, as some people would like to believe. His original intentions were to study how God had created & arranged different species all over the world. His first study led him to the discovery of natural selection, and ultimately to the origin of species. He had never intended to oppose the idea of God, but his research just led him to the conclusion that all species arose from a single common ancestor, and the stories of creation that were being propagated through some religions were just untrue. He struggled with the magnitude of this discovery as any person would, before finally publishing "On the Origin of Species". Along with staunch opposition from self-proclaimed religious authorities who know next to nothing about reality, Darwin's magnificent work wasn't clearly understood until the 1960's, with the discovery of a large array of fossils & advances in genetics helping to prove that the theory of evolution is inescapable fact.
Now, in popular media the stereotype of scientist is always that of an arrogant person who scoffs at common people. This image persists in the public as well. The idea of painting any group like that seems absurd, since arrogance is a personal emotion. Sure, there would be some scientists that are arrogant, but its just as likely as any kind of person in general. If it can be applied to any group, I would personally nominate hardened followers of any religion. Some would argue that those who have faith & bow down before a God cannot be arrogant. But it is faith that makes them arrogant: to believe that only only their God out of the hundreds created by man is true, that this God has chosen a specific group of people & they are part of it, that their beliefs have to be given even the slightest of respect without a shred of evidence. Now that is arrogance. Like I said before, there will be people in science who act arrogant. But the greatest scientists are always those who accept their failures & are willing to change their most passionate beliefs in the face of concrete contradicting evidence.
My interest in the universe goes back to when I was 8-9 years old, and I laid my hands on "The Universe" from the Childcraft series.I first came across the notions of Ptolemy of a geocentric universe. I disliked him in those days, thinking what a fool he was. That has changed since I grew up, and realized he was merely trying to make sense of what he saw, and did it better than anyone else in his time. Those notions, as I saw on the next page in the book, were challenged by Nicolaus Copernicus over a millennium later, at the risk of being put to death by the church who preferred to waddle in their ignorance. He was a hero who started a revolution that spawned generations of scientific thinkers who challenged the dogma of the authorities & slowly took the world out of the dark ages. One of those thinkers was Johannes Kepler, who furthered Copernicus' heliocentric model. I only learnt of Kepler's discovery of planetary motion in the book, but about the background much later from Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Kepler was a deeply religious man, and very fond of mathematics. His idea of the Creator was that of the ultimate mathematician, who had designed the universe with grand equations which ruled all the objects in the universe. One of his earlier works about planetary motion involved the concept of concentric polyhedrons that governed the motion of the earth & the other 5 known planets at that time. He passionately persisted on this theory for several years. The idea was in sync with his belief in the celestial mathematician and he believed with all his heart to be true. But to a scientist, mere belief isn't satisfactory. He worked for years to fit this model with observations & calculations of motion, but to no avail. He struggled with it for years until at the crossroads, he decided to let go & pursue new possibilities. And after this he discovered that the sun was not the sole center for a planet's orbit, but was one of two focii, as the planetary orbits were elliptical. And this discovery became a monumental leap in the understanding of planetary motion.
When Charles Darwin set out on the HMS Beagle he was definitely not being guided by the devil, as some people would like to believe. His original intentions were to study how God had created & arranged different species all over the world. His first study led him to the discovery of natural selection, and ultimately to the origin of species. He had never intended to oppose the idea of God, but his research just led him to the conclusion that all species arose from a single common ancestor, and the stories of creation that were being propagated through some religions were just untrue. He struggled with the magnitude of this discovery as any person would, before finally publishing "On the Origin of Species". Along with staunch opposition from self-proclaimed religious authorities who know next to nothing about reality, Darwin's magnificent work wasn't clearly understood until the 1960's, with the discovery of a large array of fossils & advances in genetics helping to prove that the theory of evolution is inescapable fact.
Now, in popular media the stereotype of scientist is always that of an arrogant person who scoffs at common people. This image persists in the public as well. The idea of painting any group like that seems absurd, since arrogance is a personal emotion. Sure, there would be some scientists that are arrogant, but its just as likely as any kind of person in general. If it can be applied to any group, I would personally nominate hardened followers of any religion. Some would argue that those who have faith & bow down before a God cannot be arrogant. But it is faith that makes them arrogant: to believe that only only their God out of the hundreds created by man is true, that this God has chosen a specific group of people & they are part of it, that their beliefs have to be given even the slightest of respect without a shred of evidence. Now that is arrogance. Like I said before, there will be people in science who act arrogant. But the greatest scientists are always those who accept their failures & are willing to change their most passionate beliefs in the face of concrete contradicting evidence.
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