He Who Observes and Measures the Appearances of the Phenomenal World

Q. Define, then, the physical scientist. A. The physical scientist is he who observes and measures the appearances of the phenomenal world and from his data draws conclusions as to the nature of their causes. He deals, therefore, only with...

Source: The Science of the Initiates  by Eugene Milne Cosgrove

That Made Me Wonder If He Wasn’t Ahead of His Time

Just a month before, Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had left their colleague, Michael Collins, aboard spaceship Columbia and walked on the moon, beating by five months President Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the moon...

Source: My Life  by Bill Clinton

Accepted Only That Which It Could See and Touch

Since its beginnings in the seventeenth century, modern science has focused on the kind of “facts” that can be grasped by the senses and proven by measurement. It abandoned the religious explanations for the world, which posited an unseen God...

Source: The Secret Teachers of the Western World  by Gary Lachman

Man on the Moon Viewing the Earth Was in the Service of the Copernican Hypothesis

Moon voyages became popular in the 1630s, their underlying inspiration Galileo’s telescope and the curiosity it piqued about the planet; but the way of reaching the new world on the moon was more important than the substance of an ideal...

Source: Utopian Thought in the Western World  by Frank E. Manuel

It Is Probably a Sphere

Before any celestial distances or sizes could be calculated, the ancient Greeks first had to establish that the Earth is a sphere. This view gained acceptance in ancient Greece as philosophers became familiar with the notion that ships gradually disappear...

Source: Big Bang  by Simon Singh

Earth Had to Be a Sphere

It is not so much that certain educated men had not already theorized that Earth was round, but that with the return of the first ship Victoria the expedition’s wealthy financial backers had visual evidence that ships could circumnavigate the...

Source: JFK  by L. Fletcher Prouty

He Believed That the Moon and Stars Were Nothing More than Holes in the Firmament

Anaximander of Miletus argued that the Sun was a hole in a fire-filled ring that encircled the Earth and revolved around it. Similarly, he believed that the Moon and stars were nothing more than holes in the firmament, revealing otherwise...

Source: Big Bang  by Simon Singh

It Just Seemed So Utterly Obvious That the Sun Revolved Round a Static Earth

Egocentric attitudes may have been a contributory factor behind the dominance of the geocentric world-view, but there were other reasons for preferring an Earth-centred universe to Aristarchus’ Sun-centred universe. One basic problem with the Sun-centred world-view was that it appeared...

Source: Big Bang  by Simon Singh

Are You in an Incomprehensible Chaos

Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute—and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to...

Source: Philosophy: Who Needs It  by Ayn Rand

We Think Our Beliefs Are Based on Sound Evidence

Another reason to adopt moderate skepticism concerns the very real danger that we might be deceiving ourselves in our beliefs, even when we think our beliefs are based on sound evidence. One way in which this can happen is well...

Source: The Beatles and Philosophy  by David Detmer

They Had at Least the Evidence of Their Senses

In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one per cent of us could give...

It’s as Simple as That

Mike Michaelson : Christof, let me ask you, why do you think that Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world until now? Christof :We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented....

Source: The Truman Show

Nothing More than Reflected Sunlight

Throw in some assumptions, such as moonlight being nothing more than reflected sunlight, and a framework of scientific logic takes shape.

Source: Big Bang  by Simon Singh