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To me, I think what this demonstrates more than anything else is that the human mind is limited by the metaphors it has access to. Leaving astronomy out of it—
by empath75 6y ago
To me, I think what this demonstrates more than anything else is that the human mind is limited by the metaphors it has access to.
Leaving astronomy out of it— just look at the how we describe the mind — it’s been variously described as breath, or hydraulics, or clockworks and now as a computer.
Probably in 100 years we’ll be looking back at our primitive understanding of how the brain works and laughing.
They thought the sun might be made of coal because they were excited by the industrial revolution and the discover of thermodynamics and the steam engine and thought it might be the same phenomenon.
- jedberg 6y agoThe metaphors are just how we explain it to people so they can understand. We've known for a long time that brains don't work like computers. They they are analog systems with weights and thresholds. But that is hard to describe to a layperson.
- jeremyjh 6y agoI don't think it is a matter of metaphors at all, but simply a limited understanding of laws and forces. There wasn't a force known at the time that could produce so much light and heat for so long with the mass of the sun. The only conceivable way to produce light and heat like that was to burn vast quantities of fuels.
- nabla9 6y agoI strongly disagree. I don't disagree that human mind is limited by metaphors. I disagree that it applies to this situation. Before you know about radioactivity and nuclear reactions the only options available were: 1. Try to find reasonable explanation using scientific explanations (chemistry at that time) and try to calculate the possibilities. 2. Leave the question undetermined. 3. Wildly speculate without any constraints. (God or some magic force). Science was limited by data and experiments.