What Exactly Is for Certain?

How can we be sure that the Earth was not created in seven days, and that man did not descend from ape? The history of science and the ambiguity of the past keep many of us guessing because of the lack of proficient evidence and the fact that, although we may try having complete knowledge of many of life's origins, there is still much left the imagination. Though these questions are just one of the many questions left unanswered about the past, they reveal the real problem of uncertainty.

In relation to science, this field of study often appears to be solid, as well as complex and progressive of all areas of knowledge. This is most likely due to the many discoveries science has brought us. One of the many reasons we, as human beings, have advanced and evolved so much (speaking in terms of becoming a more efficient and civilized group of people as a whole and not in any relation to the ideals of Cecil Rhodes) is because of science and technology. But as we continue to "progress" during this present time and hopefully into the future, could it appropriate to say that we are losing sight of the past? There is often news about new breakthroughs and innovations occurring in the scientific world, but can one question how actually "recent" these discoveries are? In Oliver Sack's article "Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science", he explains that science is not continuous and progressive as it seems, and is often times very backwards and "contradictory". In the article, Sacks uses various examples of scientific discoveries that we acknowledge today that were discovered not by the people they are ascribed to but rather earlier predecessors, that were forgotten, or either ignored. In his argument, Sacks shows us that many times, while these forgotten minds were in fact correct in there discoveries, or at least had some sense of validity to their theories to subjects, they were often discredited due to lack of knowledge to the specific area or lack of "credible" experience. One of the examples Sacks used was the poet Goethe. During the late 18th and 19th centuries, Goethe became fascinated with "the subjectivity of color, and its unexpected appearances and modifications and disappearances", and began his own research, writing his own book on color theory, called Farbenlehre (Silvers 155). Even though Goethe was able to construct his own theory that could have been as credible as Isaac Newton's "classical color theory", he was still discredited for his works (156). "His color theory was seen by his scientific contemporaries as unscientific and mysticalÐ'...His style and language were alien to those of contemporary scientific researchersÐ'...[and they felt] that poets and scientists were set apart, had their own place, and that Goethe was trespassing in a realm not his own"(156). It was thought illogical for a poet to make groundbreaking discoveries in a field of study not his own. Because Goethe had no previous scientific experience, and was publicly known as a writer and not a scientist, his principles on the color theory were overlooked and Edwin Land, a man with much more experience in the field, made discoveries similar to his much later.

What Oliver Sacks discusses in his essay, is the notion of "prematurity" in science and how certain discoveries could not be accepted due to their content or the person that is making the discovery. "A discovery is premature if its implications cannot be connected by a series of simple logical steps to canonical, or generally accepted, knowledge"(158). What this is is an example of Thomas Kuhn's theory of the "paradigm shift". Kuhn describes the "shift" as a change in what is seen as the paradigm, or the exemplar, the main "framework within which science is conducted"(Warburton 124). As the paradigm shifts, new ways of thinking become accepted and new areas of knowledge are opened to be explored while old ideas are discarded, for example Ptolemy and Nicolas Copernicus. Ptolemy, an early Egyptian astrologer, created the geocentric theory, which is the sun and planets revolve around the earth, but during the 1500s, Nicolas Copernicus discovered that Ptolemy was wrong and that the earth in fact revolved around the sun. As Copernicus' views were accepted (though not to the 1800s), the paradigm of knowledge shifted and Ptolemy's theory, though acknowledged,