Index: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Home > Scientific mythology
There are many stories that inform our understanding of the history of science and technology. Some of these are perfectly true, some are questionable, and some are known to be false. Our understanding, appreciation and commitment to science is supported by ritual and stories. Science itself can be studied through the lens of mythology.1 Myths within the history of science
1.1 The limitations of using dramatic historical stories to teach science
Commentators on the history of science, such as James Burke, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have pointed out the limitations of using dramatic historical stories to teach science. In the attempt to fit the history of science into a tale with a moral lesson, there is a tendency to simplify complex historical realities, and this tends to give the general public a misimpression about what scientists do and how the process of science works.
For example, historians of science and scientific educators often point out that scientific myths often contain an inspired "heroic" genius, and this obscures the role of social communication and collaboration in the scientific process as well as contributes to the perception that science is too hard for mere mortals to undertake. Also, scientific myths often contain an "evil" establishment, and this obscures the fact that there are often good reasons why the establishment believes what it does and that in many cases, the established view turns out to be correct. Scientific myths also tend to either overstate or understate the role of chance in scientific discovery, and the tendency to emphasis the dramatic, tends to understate the incremental progress that consitutes most scientific advancement.
Also in the effort to create a dramatic story, scientific myths tend to reduce theory verification to one dramatic experiment which is claimed to prove a theory (for example, the Michelson-Morley experiment). This leads to the misperception that scientific theories are fragile in that they are based on a few crucial facts, when in fact most scientific theories are robust in that they are based on many independent lines of evidence and can withstand cases in which some interpretations of data later turn out to be incorrect.
1.2 A listing of some major myths of science
Some of the stories told about science and scientific discovery are:
- Isaac Newton's apple
- Galileo Galilei's cannonballs off the leaning tower of Pisa, and some stories about his persecution by the Catholic Church
- Archimedes' "Eureka"
- Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of America, or the round Earth
- The evolution of the Peppered moth during the Industrial Revolution
- Gregor Mendel's experiments with pea plants.
- Copernicus, his theory, and his reasons for withholding publication. According to Arthur Koestler, Copernicus did not propose a true heliocentric theory, he added a system of cycles and subcycles that made his system even more complicated than the Ptolemaic system, and he withheld publication out of fears of being ridiculed by other scholars, not out fears of persecution.
- Medieval stained glass windows as "proof" that glass is really a liquid, not a true solid, since the fact that the bottom edges of the glass pieces are thicker than the tops "proves" that the glass has flowed (albeit slowly) over the centuries. The truth most likely is that 1) medieval glass-making techniques did not produce glass with uniform thickness (this is known), and 2) the window artisans installed the glass pieces with the thicker edge toward the bottom. (Exactly what glass "is" remains controversial.)
- That people used to believe the earth is flat. According to historian Jeffrey Burton Russell , this myth has been used to encourage the dichotomy of science and religion. (It does also help to glorify the achievement of Christopher Columbus.)
- Kekules snakes.
Read more »