Food For Thought

Sirus

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."

John Locke.


I found this statement to be rather profound. As it's applicable to human nature it is still very true as of this moment. Very often as a society we tend to disfavor anything against the status quo.

Comments ? Specifics ?

I'd be interested to hear about events in which this is true, I can think about quite a few which involves scientific philosophies, but I'd rather not delve into that again.

Bosnian_Cowboy

If it isn't a part of the status quo then it is natural to be suspicious. There is a reason it isn't. If this opinion is good, it will eventually have a larger following. Have you ever heard of an opinion being discarded to never be given a chance to occupy any more thoughts? I haven't. Opinions don't die.

p4Samwise

Being <i>too</i> quick to seize onto new ideas can lead to old ones being discarded out of hand, which can lead to knowledge being irretrievably lost, new policies and practices being implemented before they can be thought out thoroughly, et cetera. For example, everyone jumped onto the X-ray bandwagon when the technology was first introduced, only to find out much later that radiation exposure can be harmful. A little more suspicion would have been beneficial.

Given sufficient time, though, good ideas will also push through and win out. Look how long it took that whole "heliocentric solar system" idea to gain acceptance. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->

Sirus

It's funny that it's very prevalent in your replies ( By all means I mean no offense). But the point is that theyre discredited because they're not common yet, not because its a good/bad idea.

p4Samwise

To some extent, though, you have to take into account <i>why</i> a given idea might not be common. If it looks like the idea is uncommon because lots of qualified people have examined it and found it to be a bad idea, well, that does give you something to think about. For example, a perpetual motion machine. Lots of very qualified people have examined this idea and found it to be unworkable. If you suggest otherwise, odds are you'll be laughed out of the room - not because it's a new and uncommon idea, but in fact because it's an old idea that has been thoroughly debunked.

There's a big difference between an idea that has already been thoroughly debunked and an idea that is completely new. Both will meet with some resistance, but a new idea with good backing generally meets with far less resistance than an old idea with a long-established reputation of being utter bunk.

Bosnian_Cowboy

Yeah, take the Star Wars program as an example. A lot of people jumped on board this one-wheeled bandwagon (it doesn't work!).

Aegeri

Or that protein is the genetic information in a cell. Prior to some important experiments by the likes of Grffin and Avery, most molecular scienctists were convinced that DNA was nothing more than scaffold on which protein was held.

That idea has been proven to be utterly bunk through years of experiements that do indeed establish that DNA is the genetic material.

Another classic example is spontaneous creation theory. Simply put, it claims that if you have meat it goes rotten inevitably from 'out of thin air'. The meat just 'creates' these contaminants. Louis Pasteur disproved this theory with his famour Pasteur flask experiment, where he demonstrated that some contaminant from the environment must first enter the food or liquid to contaminate it.

CommunistWithAGun

That quote is the story of my life