Resistant to Change

During my time in Scientific Revolutions I have come to realize that society, as a whole is significantly resistant to, if not downright afraid of new scientific ideas. As Philip Appleman states “A 19th century adage proposed that it is the fate of all great scientific discoveries to pass through three stages. In the first stage, people say, ‘It’s absurd’; in the second, ‘It’s contrary to the Bible’; and in the third, ‘Oh, we’ve known that all along.’” (Appleman 13) This is shown countless times in our past as with every proposed theory we know as truths today there has been direct opposition with gradual acceptance.
To us the struggle of acceptance with a new theory is most dramatically seen in recent years with the evolutionary theories proposed by Charles Darwin. In 1859, Darwin first published his Origin of Species; this caused mass hysteria amongst society as it directly refuted what was previously understood as truth. Less then a hundred years ago creationism was still being taught in schools, as in 1925 John Thomas Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolutionary theory to his students. (Appleman 16) And merely two decades ago, in 1987, did the Supreme Court finally rule that public schools couldn’t teach creationism.
It has taken a considerable amount of time for the populace to recover from Darwin’s initial evolutionary proposition. As we travel through the aforementioned stages of acceptance we seem to have gotten stuck in the second phase, ‘It’s contrary to the Bible’. Last year on CNN featured a debate on creationism vs. evolutionism.




Through the video one can see that the resistance to switch over to Darwinian thinking is still in full swing. The rise of new scientific developments sparks a fear in people as it fundamentally means a previous belief and understanding was incorrect. Therefore part of the resistance lies in admitting you were wrong or what you believe in is false.
I believe this resistance to new theories only lies within the scientific community. I have seen in the Graphic Design and Digital Media major that developmental ideas are seen mostly as advancements in the field and received with open arms. I think the stereotype of the mad scientist is still greatly affecting us, the general public, as science is still considered a dangerous art.

Works Cited and Course Readings:

Appleman, Philip, ed. Darwin. 3rd ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Creationism debate on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" Perf. Rob Boston and Sharmane Yoest. You Tube. 16 Aug. 2007. 13 Dec. 2008 .

Scotch tape producing x-rays

Within the last month at UCLA researcher Seth Putterman and his students, Carlos Camara, Juan Escobar, and Jonathan Hird have discovered that scotch tape can produce X-rays. Similar to the visible light emitted by biting wintergreen LifeSavers in the dark, when the scotch tape is pulled in a vacuum it emits light. The reason this happens is because of triboluminesces, it is the separation of charges during the rubbing of two materials together or in this case the separation of the tape. When the charges reunite, light and X-rays can be produced, just like in a lightning strike. The X-rays created when the tape is pulled is produced in nanosecond bursts containing about 1 million X-ray photons apiece. This is equivalent of about a tenth of a milliwatt of energy. That was enough energy to produce an X-ray image in a second. Sandwhiching a finger between the vacuum containing the tape and X-ray film allows the image to be recorded.
To watch the scientists do this - http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/x-rays/

Robert Hooke and MicroscopyAbstract Robert Hooke was an extraordinarily industrious man who played an important part in how we understand nature toda

Abstract
Robert Hooke was an extraordinarily industrious man who played an important part in how we understand nature today. Hooke’s influential scientific research deems him a virtuoso of his time. Unfortunately, he is disregarded in most history books. His achievements were in the field of microscopy, specifically, developing the first compound microscope, and being the first to recognize cells. Hooke’s inventions allowed him to reveal the unknown universe of microscopic organisms, paving way for a new level of nature, that was never known before. A member of the Royal Society for over 40 years, Hooke was at the heart of the scientific revolution.

For more info - http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/hooke.html

For a picture of Robert Hooke's Ccompound microscope - http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/Gifs/hookscop.html

Miracles

While reading the excerpt, "Nature and God, Wisdom and Will" in The Scientific Revolutions many questions arose for me. It talked a lot about how unexplainable things in nature were deemed as acts of God by mechanical philosophers during this time. This caused me to wonder if these philosophers were just settling with what a highly Christian society had accepted; was deeming miracles a cop out for further thought or backlash? It seemed the standard to answer all questions dealing with why things happen with because God made it so.
The John Templeton Foundation had similar doubts about miracles and believes in thorough methodology through its prayer research studies. They conducted the largest study on prayer in 2006, which featured over 1,800 patients. They stated that "Bypass patients who consented to take part in the experiment were divided randomly into three groups. Some patients received prayers but were not informed of that. In the second group the patients got no prayers, and also were not informed one way or the other. The third group got prayers and were told so. There was virtually no difference in complication rates between patients in the first two groups. But the third group, in which patients knew they were receiving prayers, had a complication rate of 59 percent--significantly more than the rate of 52 percent in the no-prayer group." The Foundation is not trying to disprove whether God exists but rather show that deeming something a miracle is not always the final answer.

Works Cited
Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: The University of Chicago press, 1996.

The Way We Conceptualize the Universe: Then v.s. Now

With the invention of the mechanical clock in the 13th century a metaphor linking the clock to the natural world was created. In the 1630's Descartes elaborated, explaining that while machines are made by man they still have the power to move independently. And that therefore the individual pieces making up the machines move in different ways, doing their part to create a greater whole. (Shapin) Philosophers of the time thought that this was a reasonable analogy as to the understanding of the workings of the natural world. 

In 1996, however, Stephanie Pace Marshall explained in the Wingspread Journal that the clock metaphor was far too linear. Arguing that in the past people have divided and compartmentalized every aspect of existence and that this no longer holds true. Scientists have proposed the new analogy of the Kaleidoscope.  Understanding that most of nature, for instance, weather, ecological systems, developing embryos, and the brain, are not linear brought the need for a new way of conceptualizing the universe. The world is an adaptive, dynamic, and pattern seeking world full of interconnections and order. As Marshall says, "It is a world where increasingly complex behaviors are created by very simple rules--rules that govern the relationships of individuals..."