Blind watchers, ch6

After some consideration, I have concluded that this chapter can be summarized as the following: Greeks win at geometry and don't ever laugh at simple questions posted by the nice lady who works for you.

The thing with the stellar aberration and the dot reminds me of the chapter on optical illusions in my general psych book.

This chapter also had a lot more commentaries. Although I don't have anything against commentaries in particular and, in the case of history books (which is sort of is), commentaries can make the narration more interesting, for this chapter it was just irritating. From the part where he wrote, in parenthesis, "The obvious lesson is always be sure of yourself and never check your results!" (Which is, from my experience in science, such a spectacularly bad idea -- I mean not checking your results? Ever?) to the part where he wrote "I also wonder why the significance of scientific discoveries is so often dismissed by historians in favor of political, military, or economic developments." which, first of all, means that he probably didn't read that many historical books -- or at least, not a great variety of them because I've read ones that covered the scientific discoveries in great detail (though he was correct about biologists thinking that the Origin of Species should be mentioned in every historical text covering the Darwinian age). Second of all, scientific discoveries, I'm sad to say, often has applications that only become sociologically significant once we have the technology to apply the discovered knowledge at a more general level (meaning outside of labs in matters related to the public). There is a step between scientific discoveries and its impact on history (especially now, where everything discovered has to be vetted by a committee, published, vetted by another committee, tested, funded, tested again, before it becomes available to the general public -- okay, I lied, there are more than one steps). Whereas, say, warfare... example: Mr. President declares us to be at war, congress approves (or goes mum at the time, I guess, in our case), we are at war. Economy and politics, I feel, is not as disconnected from society as science can be (the general public generally don't care much about quarks, but they will care about inflation and any economic principle that might solve the problem with social security). Thirdly: duh. Historians are far more likely to have a background in liberal arts and social sciences than, say, quantum physics or molecular biology. Scientists, when writing books, are more likely to write about things in the field of science than, say, the significance of the meeting of troops at the Elbe River. Would it not make sense that historians, would do the same?

Did I just rant? Very well, I've just ranted.
End rant.

(Stellar aberration is a cool term, though. Just try saying it aloud.)