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En una rueda de prensa cele…
He said Carl Sagan: "What an amazing thing a book is... One look and you are inside the mind of another person, perhaps someone who died thousands of years ago... Books break the shackles of time."
It's a good metaphor for what happens when we read a book. However, not all books are the same. Some are based on mere opinions, others on something more important. For example: Which of the two tables at the top of this entry is the longest?
From irrational faith to experiment
Irrational faith is based on believing without seeing. The next step, advocated by Saint Thomas of Aquino, it was "seeing is believing." In fact, many skeptics of any matter are often told "you haven't seen it" or "if you saw it, you would believe it."
However, since the 1640s, there has been another higher level of knowledge: eThe experiment, the scientific method (Indeed, we should not really expect to find reliable science before scientific communities began to take shape in the 1640s.)
It is a method so revolutionary that it relegates "seeing is believing" to oblivion, and in fact turns it completely on its head. Because if we take a look at the tables in the previous image, we will ensure that the table on the left is longer than the table on the right. However, if we perform the experiment (measure both tables with a ruler), We will discover that both are exactly the same. Suddenly, our “seeing is believing” has been relegated to the category of anecdote (and false at that).
So the process of arriving at an increasingly objective knowledge seems to have already gone through three levels: faith in what is not seen, faith in what I see, faith in what we can explain how we see guaranteeing that we will always obtain the same explanation for all people and all things. That is, religion, personal opinion and science.
So, while Sagan's metaphor is certainly inspiring, not all books are created equal. Because there are religious books. Books in which the author contributes his personal opinion. And books written about years, or decades, of experiments.
If the idea of Grace arises to differentiate human beings from animals (we are on a higher level than them), the idea of culture, as a shared set of ideas, was born to differentiate some peoples from others (some are on a higher level). above others). The next level was the birth of science, of the experiment, which no longer knows borders, which no longer belongs to people, which no longer belongs to peoples... transcends us all because it is more objective, reliable and accurate than all our individual and collective opinions.
He an opinionator's book would be like the imposture of the typical tweeter who is an anarcho-primitivist, his eyes shine with Thoreau, he winks at neo-Luddism, he intones the mea culpa for Pachamama... but 24/7 he is on social media with his smartphone. That is, it gives its opinion and criticizes what was born from experimentation, science and progress using tools resulting from experience, science and progress.
In the legendary series Doctor Who, in a double episode divided into two parts, “Silence in the Library” (4×08), the action takes place on a planet called Library, which has continents divided into genres (the equator is the biographies). I am convinced which continent I would like to live on without needing to appeal to my personal opinion. And in case it is not yet clear enough, in the following video I use another analogy (that of climbing mountains):
The image of the tablesBy the way, it is the work of Roger Shepard (1990), psychologist and artist.
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The news
Seeing is not enough to believe: your opinion is not worth as much as you think
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
The heart-warming story we all need right now.