I just saw an article on cosmology, it is postulating the idea of dark fluid to explain the forces we just don’t understand but know are there. A new idea, different to the ideas that came before.
In school we were taught one type of chemistry for the first few years, a sort of simplistic version. Then when we moved to a more advanced chemistry class we were told tat everything we had been taught before was wrong, it was just a way to understand the basics.
Now we hear that the moon is not as dry as we thought – it actually has a fair amount of water on it. I remember hearing it was like a dusty desert. Not any more.
I watched the Star Trek film a while ago (you know the first of the new series). In it Scotty talks about beaming somebody from one moving place to another moving place and how unique it would be. But actually, all of the places that are considered static are moving. According to NASA you are actually moving at 1.3 Million mph. Next time you get a speeding ticket try entering this paper as evidence that it is impossible to comply with speeding laws. The flat earth society puts forward the idea that the earth is static and everything is moving around it. Actually some scientists used to believe that (maybe some still do). That is pretty much what the Scotty comment suggests.
We often look on science as a static fact based subject, but actually very little in science is as rigid as people make out. Part of science is to always review and challenge what we believe.
The artistic/political world on the other hand is supposed to be more based on opinion, but try getting somebody to challenge their artistic or political views – for many it seems impossible.
And here is an interesting challenge. We have a government that are saying they will follow the science. For a politician a u-turn is a sign of weakness, but for a scientist it is a sign of strength. Take the latest Fauci interview where he explains why he changed advice on wearing face coverings – and then listen to the politicians that think that it is a weakness.
So many of us want certainty in the world, but actually the world is a scary changing place. Sometimes we need that simple chemistry to give us a reference point to live our lives, but be prepared for the world to be a more complex place than we want.