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April 17, 2008 at 8:11am
by thecodepounder I’ve always believed that one of the most desirable qualities in a human being is the ability to change one’s mind. We’ve all heard people say something along the lines of “there’s nothing you can say that will ever change my mind.” When I hear that I just feel so, well, sad really, for the person saying it. Not to mention that it becomes hard for me to have much, if any, respect for someone so closed off from reality.
I’ve always taken more of the scientific approach, which is to say that I consider my beliefs and opinions to be provisional. That’s just the way I’ve always been, even before I knew anything about science or skepticism or critical thinking, etc.
This topic puts me in mind of one of my heroes, Johannes Kepler. Kepler, of course, discovered the “laws of planetary motion.” Kepler was a deeply religious man, having been educated at seminary, as well as an outstanding mathematician and astronomer, among other things. In fact, he found in geometry, or so he believed, a way to ‘read the mind of God.’
Kepler sought about to discover the exact nature of the orbits of the planets around the sun. He desperately wanted to find that the planets orbited the sun in perfect circles, as had been the assumption since the time of Aristotle and Ptolomy. It made sense that a perfect god would settle for nothing less. Working from the most accurate observations available at the time–those of the planet Mars made by Tycho Brahe, he labored for years to make the data fit into the formula for a circle, but he couldn’t. So he abandoned the idea and in rather short order, discovered that planets orbit the sun not in a circle, but an ellipse, and the rest is history, as they say.
I love Carl Sagan’s description of this moment, from his book and documentary Cosmos:
When he [Kepler] found that his long-cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. That is the heart of science.
Isn’t that amazing? He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. How many of us could do the same? It’s not an easy or comfortable position to take–but what’s the alternative?
2 Comments
#1. Negligible Knowledge Base 05.08.2008
[...] where it is most certainly not due. But, as always, he’s one of my favorite people. As I’ve stated before, I believe that one of the most desirable qualities in a human being is the ability to change [...]
#2. Negligible Knowledge Base 08.18.2008
[...] Personally, I find the story of Johannes Kepler inspirational (so to speak). Here’s a guy who, though a devout Christian who actually studied for the clergy, was willing to accept reality even when it conflicted with his beliefs. As Carl Sagan put it so eloquently in Cosmos: When he [Kepler] found that his long-cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. That is the heart of science. [...]
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