Sometime in 1965 I had a conversation with a lieutenant, jg. We were talking about his stereo which was of the electron tube variety. He preferred tubes to the, then, newer transistor technology because he could hear a “hiss” in transistor equipment. At least he said he could. Since he was an officer and I was an enlisted petty officer I kept my mouth shut. Still I did think about how people often find reasons for rejecting new technology. It wasn’t that the lieutenant was old school, in most things he seemed to be fairly “hip” (a term current at the time). He had for his own reasons decided that real stereos were made with tubes and not with transistors. Later on in life I can remember an engineer I worked with declaring that integrated circuits meant the end of engineering (of the electronic variety). This particular man loved designing new circuits with discrete components. New ideas and ways of thinking are sometimes difficult accept.
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Sometimes I have trouble believing that things change. Last month I posted Out of Context and expressed my difficulty believing that the Roman Catholic Church had changed its attitude about science. After that I read another article, Vatican’s Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data about the Vatican’s telescope here in Arizona. Who knew? Thinking about this has reminded me that attitudes in people, organizations and society do change. Scientists also have trouble accepting new ideas sometimes. Until the late 1960s (1967 I think) the idea that the continents could move (and had) was unthinkable to geologists. Then along came the idea of plate tectonics and almost overnight all the textbooks on geology became obsolete. It wasn’t that geologists were dumb or resistant to change; they had told astronomers (and physicists) that the earth was four billion years old when astronomers were pegging the universe’s age in millions of years. It was just that the idea of continents plowing through a solid seabed was unthinkable. Michael E. Wysession, in The Teaching Company’s course, How the Earth Works, describes how he finds the explanations of geology in old textbooks convoluted and contrived in light of our present knowledge.
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I recently read about a museum that explains a lot of science in that way. It is the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I had read of this museum before in Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs. That article was a museum review written at the time of its opening. A little over a week ago I read of the reactions of some paleontologists that took a field trip to the museum. The article was Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh in the New York Times. I especially enjoyed some of the quotes.
I’m speechless; it’s rather scary.
Derek E.G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale as reported in Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh in the New York Times, June 30 2009
I think they should rename the museum — not the Creation Museum, but the Confusion Museum.
Unfortunately, they do it knowingly.
I was dismayed. As a Christian, I was dismayed.
Dr. Lisa E. Park, a professor of paleontology at the University of Akron as reported in Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh in the New York Times, June 30 2009
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There is a difference between the convoluted and contrived explanations the Creation Museum espouses and those found in outmoded geology textbooks. The textbooks were trying to fit observations into a rational framework of the knowledge current at the time of their being written. The Creation Museum is trying to fit observations into a framework of knowledge as it was 2000 to 6000 years ago. Professor Wysession also points out that that knowledge does change and that some time in the future we may look back at our present knowledge and wonder how we could have believed what we do at the present. That is not possible if your knowledge base is frozen in time. I agree with Derek Briggs; it is scary. I also find myself in agreement with Dr. Park. I am definitely dismayed as a Christian.
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I wonder what the Vatican’s position on the Creation Museum is. I also wonder if my lieutenant ever updated his stereo system.
