Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Challenging conventional wisdom

PZ Myers complains about those who deny the Big Bang. Now, I regard the evidence for the Big Bang as sufficient to merit my acknowledgement, but I also know that back when the theory was first proposed, the dominant view among cosmologists was that the universe in fact had no beginning, and hence they ridiculed the idea of the Big Bang.

Kind of like Dr. Myers does with the Intelligent Design school, no?

(He'll protest that unlike the original Big Bang theorists, ID proponents have no evidence to back them up, but I think the same thing was true with the Big Bang; scientists -- like the rest of us -- often have vested interests in their own pet theories, and hence it often takes some time for ideas which both challenge the dominant ideologies and happen to be true to take hold in the academy. So I think I'll wait awhile before passing judgment on the ID theory.)

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