4 ms·

> I would love to be able to speak to Galileo to understand how he felt. James Lovelock is very old, and Galileo Galilei lived a really long time ago. This ma

by nkurz 6y ago

> I would love to be able to speak to Galileo to understand how he felt. James Lovelock is very old, and Galileo Galilei lived a really long time ago. This made me wonder how far away the two actually are in time. Lovelock was born in 1919, and Galileo died in 1642. Thus if someone was born while Galileo was still alive, and lived to the age that Lovelock is now, they would have died in 1743. Once more, and we are at 1844; then again we get to 1945 --- at the beginning of Lovelock's career in science. Surprising to think that it's really only three long lifetimes that separate Lovelock from Galileo!

lisper 6y ago
The entire modern scientific enterprise has only been going on for about 400 years. That's the blink of an eye in the grand and glorious scheme of things. There are people alive today who personally knew Albert Einstein and Erwin Schroedinger. The atomic theory was still controversial 100 years ago. When I was in elementary school in the 1970s one of the things we were taught is that atoms are real despite the fact that no one has ever seen one, and no one ever would.
- ljf 6y ago
  I really hate it when people's attitude to pretty much anything is 'well that is just how it is done' - as we haven't really been doing anything at all in the modern way we a do it, that long. The way we live, love, create, eat and work are constantly evolving and changing. Only 25 x 80 year life spans separate us from the time of Jesus or 62 lifetimes since the start of the dynastic Egyptians.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  I am not sure what "elementary school" is but in the context of atoms I guess this is more or less 10-12 years old. I was 10 in 1980 and as far as I can remember we were always taught about atoms as normal things, with electrons etc. No controversy (that was in France). I think nobody told us about the capacity to see them or not though.

by nkurz 6y ago

lisper 6y ago

The entire modern scientific enterprise has only been going on for about 400 years. That's the blink of an eye in the grand and glorious scheme of things. There are people alive today who personally knew Albert Einstein and Erwin Schroedinger. The atomic theory was still controversial 100 years ago. When I was in elementary school in the 1970s one of the things we were taught is that atoms are real despite the fact that no one has ever seen one, and no one ever would.

ljf 6y ago
I really hate it when people's attitude to pretty much anything is 'well that is just how it is done' - as we haven't really been doing anything at all in the modern way we a do it, that long. The way we live, love, create, eat and work are constantly evolving and changing. Only 25 x 80 year life spans separate us from the time of Jesus or 62 lifetimes since the start of the dynastic Egyptians.
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
I am not sure what "elementary school" is but in the context of atoms I guess this is more or less 10-12 years old. I was 10 in 1980 and as far as I can remember we were always taught about atoms as normal things, with electrons etc. No controversy (that was in France). I think nobody told us about the capacity to see them or not though.