The Evolution of Science

[Tau]

 

The above page is from a book I have from 1945 called "The Wonders of Science." Below the picture it reads:

 

In the Cretaceous Period, about for million years ago, there were still great dinosaurs living on the Earth, but the supremacy of the reptile was on the decline....

 

What surprised me so much was not that they had the 4 million years ago completely wrong, but that it was from 1945. Maybe 100 years prior I would have expected such a far off measurement, but this was less 60 years ago. The page got me thinking about what we are taught today in school about science and the natural world; how things are. If 60 years ago they were teaching children that dinosaurs were alive 4 million years ago, what parallels are there today? What are we being taught that is completely and utterly wrong? Of course, we will not know until the truth, or revised truth, is discovered, maybe 20, 50, 200 years from now.

 

What I'm curious to know from those of you reading this is what you think scientists will discover in the future that will belie our current understanding of how things are?

[NSX]

Of course. Everything will keep being revised. I think it was faf that said even when we know everything, there will just be more to learn later.

 

A good example is Quantum Mechanics. It's really intuitive right now; maybe 50 years from know, we'll all have a better understanding of it...hopefully

[daisy]

For those of yoy interested in developmental biology there is a bit of an argument going on just now between the accepted "progress zone" model proposed by Lewis Wolpert and some new data generated by Cliff Tabin that would seem to refute this model.