I just thought it'd be interesting to have a discussion on this. :)
I listen to a lot of science programs and things and look up various science subjects for fun and follow it in the news and sometimes it helps to change your ideas about the world.

Things like the Big Bang theory, where we're basically trying to work and think our way back into an explosion, right into the moment of stability just before it happened: A point of stuff that contained everything that is. Maybe there was something outside it, or that spawned it, that'd be logical, but we can't know because everything is inside and nothing comes from anywhere else or goes anywhere else. So there's no way of telling through "normal" means... Could you even think your way out of there, really? Without it being fantasy?
Makes you think...
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Another good thing I was just listening to was a team doing research on time perception and how we think that time speeds up or slows down when we're scared or bored... It turns out that what mainly happens is just that when we're young and when we're scared or excited we simply lay down denser memories because we concentrate more, so when we think about it, it seems that it took longer. From further experiments and tests, the thinking is that time perception doesn't occur the way we think it does experientially, as some kind of flowing river etc, but our minds just work to interpret it that way, and have to work quite hard at it. In fact, some mental illness is in part due to problems with proper perception of continuity. -cause and effect not seeming to meet up and the problems that causes the mind.
THIS makes you think, and realise just how artificial our ideas of life by the clock really are.
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Now, one last thing... We tend to think of those poor funny walking buggers with spastic muscles and twisted limbs as strange, weak, pathetic creatures, We can't help it. I saw this interesting study where they'd tried to work out the sorts of forces these people are battling against to try and move normally. Certain muscles spasm and twist things the wrong way and the rest of them have to fight against it, so it results in strange walks, unnatural movements, inability to speak normally...
So they calculated the forces and put special braces on various athletes that replicated the forces and to see how they'd cope. It was amazing! Massively strong men, marathon runners, aerobics experts, martial arts experts, swimmers... ALL of them were literally crying with pain after a few minutes, unable to last, even at low settings, no matter how much money they were offered to continue.

The most powerful, longest lasting person was a very young girl who was an Irish dancing champion, she outlasted the strongest athlete at much higher stress levels, many times over, but the force she had to use to overcome the restraints and move was amazing.
It certainly gives me a LOT more insight into what those poor people go through to last day by day, When even professional athletes would fall down crying at a few minutes of what they go through every day of their lives...

Heh. so, yes, I like science best when it changes my views of things and makes me see stuff in a new way.

For me its the electromagnetic repulsion of solid objects.

Like, the atoms that make up a brick wall are mostly empty space - and the atoms that make up me are mostly empty space. So why can't I just walk through the wall? There's almost no chance that any of my atoms would hit any of the wall's atoms - we're just mist at that scale.

The answer of course is electromagnetic repulsion - our atoms generate a field that resists other atoms - we all just Star Trek Force fields walking around and thinking we are "solid" - but "solid" only happens in the heart of old stars, it seems.

I like to remember that one because it reminds me that nothing - even the simple facts of solid objects - are quite what we perceive them to be. It reminds me to always questions what seems "obvious" to me.

The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke. Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins. Their views jar us and hopefully get us to think and question, like the scientific/experimental/logical mindset hopefully encourages us to do and to realize that taking something on blind faith leads to destruction. I am not referring to just religion, but anything and everything needs to be proven.

Science is the candle in the dark that has lead us out of a demon haunted world. (Thanks to Carl Sagan among others for the simile ;) )

Even Dawkins makes assumptions, but you always have to start somewhere :)

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Solid objects yes ^_^
Made up of particles... All vibrating.. Smaller and smaller. They say the elements that make us up were forged in stars- but as I understand it, the matter that makes us up and everything else, all came from that single point that expanded into what we live in today. So, just as all life on this planet is connected by a shared genetic history, all life (as it probably exists elsewhere), and everything else in this universe is connected because it all came from that same original place. In essence, we are part of our universe.
And even though our lifespans, the lifespan of our species, life on our planet, the earth itself and even our sun is nothing compared to the age of the universe, that doesn't matter because our matter (or the particles that make it up) is literally immortal.
-As I understand it.

OOoo, sounds like hippie stuff now... -_-

For me even more than Sagan and his insightful, philisophical ideas on the universe, I think the revelations about how new technology arises out of need, history and chance is what is most fascinating.

For that no one does it better than James Burke [en.wikipedia.org], of PBS's Connections.

And as a side note I think science is at it's best when we ironically end up returning to an arcane practice or ancient concept long since dismissed or ignored. For example the use of leeches in medicine or the revelation that algae, the source of petroleum, may be the answer to replacing that polluting, finite resource.

I hope this is on topic...I was a little confused by the original post.

Never read any Sagan myself...I just think about physics and the universe based on the current science that I know.

The original post is just about how science reveals different aspects of the world makes you look differently at things.
-that makes a change from arguments over politics, conspiracy, and religion lol!
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A lot of old ideas come back. You can make lead into gold for instance, but the process makes it rather more expensive than the value of the metal :)

And on that issue... it's mostly incorrect that new theories and knowledge are always better or always surpass older ones. sometimes they do of course, but not totally and often the newer ways of thinking incorporate the old in ways people don't realise:
like a mystical, religious, spiritual based view of the world VS a scientific one. The difference isn't as enormous and you'd think. They both evolved in a similar way, they're both NOT actually about the natural objective world (because that exists and functions regardless) but about a human way of comprehending it. And they both serve that function admirably.

The benefit of a scientific approach is that you not only reach an understanding (even if it isn't as complete as the religious one), but with your understanding you're able to manipulate and change the wider world far more fundamentally.

Sagan and Shermer are pretty good at describing and breaking down the actual thought processes. Dawkins acknowledges a huge debt to both of them and often misuses their ideas. I read his notes and then read the books he quoted from and misinterpreted. Both entertaining and enlightening. He is very good with evolutionary biology though and he should stick to that.

But no one beats James Burke, I first saw Connections about the the same time as Cosmos and my universe changed. I went from kyupol's mysticism and the demon haunted world to a love of science and reason that unfortunately has to remain amatuer because I can't grasp advanced mathematics, (even if I did win a few science awards in High School)

What also applies to this topic is the book "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, And Why".

People have a certain perception of reality and what reality is SUPPOSED to be. When something comes along which isn't in their perception, people can go through an OODA Loop (Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act). Most people get stuck in Observe to Orientate. This causes a lack of deciding and the inability to act.

Take for example when you pull up to a drive-thru. What do you expect to happen? You expect the person to ask what you would like, you tell them, they give you a total, you drive up, pay, get your order and leave. You'd be amazed at what would happen to you if you pulled up and the person at the window suddenly jumped out screaming nonsense at you next to the car. A lot of cops get hurt on traffic stops because of this effect. Hell, ever think you had a good amount of money in your bank account only to learn it was almost empty? Pretty shocking, huh?

Then there are those who reject anything anyone else says when it doesn't fit their perceptions. People will shout strange, stupid, ignorant, or unbalanced because what is happening or being said does not match what they think should go on.

Science can explain quite a few things, but how people see reality is ultimately up to themselves. Theoretical physics are awesome, when not bone dry. I'm always fascinated with people who attempt to create or find a new way of doing things.

Croi Dhubh
What also applies to this topic is the book "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, And Why".

People have a certain perception of reality and what reality is SUPPOSED to be. When something comes along which isn't in their perception, people can go through an OODA Loop (Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act). Most people get stuck in Observe to Orientate. This causes a lack of deciding and the inability to act.

Try reading Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things

There's a belief system underlying this and our evolutionary past in finding patterns and categories. (Orientate) Decide and act are from logical thinking that allows the worldview to adjust to a new stimulus and adjust accordingly. In other words adopting a scientific worldview. The Skeptic's Toolbox anyone?

You'd almost think I knew what I was talking about. Improvise, overcome, adapt.

I'd kind of like to see the drive-through guy do that. A guy I knew had something similar happen, he went inside confronted the manager, when the manager didn't know how to solve the problem, he hit the drive-through guy over the head with the sheet metal cover from a shake machine.

Bravo1102, I am totally with you.

But it's not just that we look for patterns and categories. It's that we look for Agency.

Look at it this way - Australopithecus was *already* the smartest thing around, and at the top of the food chain. Why did she keep evolving for brains? What was the mechanism that drove her to be ever smarter when she was already so smart? Why specialize so much?

A likely answer - competition with other Australopithecines. Once they became the top of the pyramid, they started to compete with each other mainly - for mates, for food, for survival. Of course They fought a lot.

And so they grew cautious - paranoid. When something went wrong, they learned to always stop and check - "Did someone cause this? Did someone steal my spear or did I lose it? Did someone sabotage my plan or was I just unlucky?" And this was a good quality - because they were stealing each other's spears and sabotaging each other's plans.

We still do it today - we don't just say "The cup is half full" or "the cup is half empty" was say "Who stole my water?" And a lot of the time, someone did. This impulse helps keep us alert to all kinds of dangers.

It also makes us kind of paranoid, even religions. When a lightning bolt burns down our village, we look up at the sky and say "Did someone cause this?"

We are always trying to interpret reality in the way that worked best for our forebears. Hence, we are suspicious, paranoid, and kind of grumpy.

There are people out there who refuse to believe the evidence put out by science and continue to hold on to what they think is true. People like the Flat Earth Society (I think that's the name), the proponent of the Universe Steady State theory....

Amazingly enough, Albert Einstein refused to believe that the Universe had a beginning and an end despite the fact that his equations were literally screaming it at him. Well, not literally...

One day, I plan on going to the moon to prove that it is made of green cheese, and not rocks. The guys who claim that we never landed on the moon gave me some hope...

Science will change your perception of the world. Especially if YOU are the experiment.

kyupol
Science will change your perception of the world. Especially if YOU are the experiment.

kyupol you are the perfect example of StaceyMontgomery's point about our evolved paranoia.

That's why we need people like you around. Because there is always the slightest of chances that you could be right and questioning and reality testing (scientific method) are always necessary. When you've eliminated all other explanations the last remaining one, no matter how strange, is the answer.

By the way the moon is not made of green cheese. Wallace and Gromit proved it was yellow cheese.

I saw Bill Nye doing a news commentary on the Chinese government's attempt to control the weather for the 2008 Olympics, debunking their method as junk science. It was like watching his old shows on PBS!

Bill Nye changed my perceptions of the world back them -- and now! ^_^

How about the Voyager craft and others inexplicably slowing down as they reach the outer limits of our solar system?
No-one knows why... some blame dark matter, others say it is because our theories of gravity are wrong... or maybe there is ome other reason... maybe space itself is smaller the further out you get, or maybe stretched.

Then again, maybe they picked up some interstellar hitchhikers whose combined weight slows these craft down?

On another subject, anyone read 'The Science of Discworld'?

Fascinating stuff... I love the idea that numerous 'intelligent' creatures developed on Earth way before us but got wiped out by various natural disasters. Who's to say there weren't a species of dinos who built huts from wood or mud and had complex social structures with a high linguistic culture? There would be no or very little trace of their structures surviving the millenia.