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lilith89ibz 's review for:
The more I read these books about "how we came to know what we know", the more obvious it becomes that our grasp on what's actually going on is not just tenuous but will likely prove to be partially to almost completely incorrect in some way that will be very obvious in retrospective. There are many things we know but can't fully explain because there are huge gaps in our knowledge (the fossil record is a joke and so is taxonomy), things that work mathematically but make no sense when we try to put them into words (looking at you, quantum physics), and things we know are true, like evolution (thank goodness for genetics) that are accepted as fact by scientists, but you only have to visit the American South to find there are plenty of people who still think "they don't come from monkeys" or for that matter, that the Earth is flat, or 6,000 years old. The process for how someone finally figured out when the Earth was formed was a wild ride. And that was in 1956. The theory of plate tectonics wasn't even accepted by a majority of geologists until the 1960s.
The single most insurmountable obstacle in humanity's way in the quest to understand things is our hubris. And by "ours" I mean mostly white men, who have consistently stood in their own way, each others, and anybody who wasn't white men, by refusing to listen to anything they didn't already believe in, collaborate with each other without harbouring a secret desire to overshadow their partners, try to ridicule others in front of their peers to make themselves feel smart, and the odd recluse who worked on something for 40 years, told absolutely no one about it, chucked his findings into a drawer and set their field of study back by 100 years. Really, the fact that we've made any progress at all is what's surprising above all else.
For a book written almost 20 years ago, it's only slightly out of date (still sad about Pluto). There have been advances in genetics and astrophysics, and some changes in taxonomy, but I would still recommend reading this book today since the historical facts still stand. Engrossing and really well written.
The single most insurmountable obstacle in humanity's way in the quest to understand things is our hubris. And by "ours" I mean mostly white men, who have consistently stood in their own way, each others, and anybody who wasn't white men, by refusing to listen to anything they didn't already believe in, collaborate with each other without harbouring a secret desire to overshadow their partners, try to ridicule others in front of their peers to make themselves feel smart, and the odd recluse who worked on something for 40 years, told absolutely no one about it, chucked his findings into a drawer and set their field of study back by 100 years. Really, the fact that we've made any progress at all is what's surprising above all else.
For a book written almost 20 years ago, it's only slightly out of date (still sad about Pluto). There have been advances in genetics and astrophysics, and some changes in taxonomy, but I would still recommend reading this book today since the historical facts still stand. Engrossing and really well written.