Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Charles Darwin

What do we know? What can we know? What have we been taught? Of that which we were taught, what was indoctrination of unchallenged dogma? What can we verify? All of the teachings and “information” which I have received and am continuously exposed to, cannot possibly true and some statements are blatantly contradictory.

What was ignorantly proposed as truths in past few centuries, included a geocentric universe, the four humors theory of health and disease, spontaneous generation and leaching. From the dawn of human history, until only a few hundred years ago, there was near universal acceptance and authorial defense of the “flat earth” and the most authoritative denial of the heliocentric universe.

Even when I started to school, yes we knew the world was round but we where taught geography from a flat, rectangular map, with all of the countries and states outlined by a heavy black line, labeled and colored coded.  It didn’t feel round in grade school. I felt that each state was fenced and autonomous and our Country was distinct and maybe fenced in. On my grade school maps, it seemed that most of the countries were PINK! (Britannia Rules the Waves). One of the watershed days of my life was when Armstrong and Aldrin sent pictures of the earth back from the moon. (of course, it was a sphere.) I was blown away by the little blue marble in the black surroundings! There were no national boundary lines, no labels, no color coding. The picture was worth more than a thousand words. It shouted out: The earth is so small in the limitless space. All of earth’s living creatures are on this life raft with no lines separating us.  Getting there and where we were required countless scientist and dreamers of many years who made it possible. In this and everything worthwhile, we stand on the shoulders of giants.