Errors of geniuses: scientific hypotheses not confirmed (10 photos). Rejection of a hypothesis Erroneous hypotheses examples

Planet Volcano. The 19th century French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier could not explain the strange orbit of Mercury, and made the assumption that there is another planet next to the Sun - Vulcan. Even several reports of the observation of a mysterious planet were published, but they all contradicted each other. In the 20th century, the theory of relativity dispelled the mystery of the orbit of Mercury, and with it the theory of Vulcan.

Spontaneous generation is a hypothesis that has been believed for millennia. This refers to the emergence of living organisms not from other organisms, eggs or seeds, but from an inanimate environment. Even Aristotle believed that fly larvae spontaneously reproduce in animal corpses. And although the question of the origin of life on Earth remains open, this theory has basically been refuted.

The expanding Earth is a surprisingly popular idea that existed until the middle of the 20th century. It was believed that the movement of the continents occurred due to the fact that the Earth is gradually increasing in volume. This hypothesis was seriously considered by Charles Darwin. Study of tectonic plates in the 1960s and later proved that the Earth did not change in size for at least 400 million years.

Phlogiston is a hypothetical element that fills all combustible substances. Chemists of the 17th century assumed that it was he who provided combustion, and was also responsible for various processes in metals, for example, for the formation of rust. The phlogiston theory was supplanted by the oxygen theory in the 1770s.

Martian channels. In 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli announced that he could see mysterious straight lines on Mars and called them "channels." Later, a theory was formulated that the channels are of artificial origin and are used by the Martians to irrigate the planet. In the 20th century, the hypothesis was refuted - the lines turned out to be an optical illusion.

Ether is a mysterious environment that many great scientists believed in existence, for example, Aristotle, Rene Descartes and Thomas Jung. True, they all understood the ether in different ways - as an analogue of vacuum, primordial substance or "transport" for light. These theories were extremely popular, but after lengthy research they were refuted.

Tabula rasa is the theory that a person is born like a "blank slate", without any mental and sensory content, receiving it only during growing up. It was formulated by Aristotle and widely distributed until the end of the 20th century. Even a deep study of genetic mechanisms and the transmission of hereditary traits could not finally convince the supporters of this hypothesis of its erroneousness.

Phrenology is one of the first and most famous pseudosciences that determines the mental qualities of a person by the shape of the skull and the size of the brain. Phrenologists argued that the larger a person has a brain, the more information it can store. Further development of neurophysiology refuted these theses.

Stationary Universe. Einstein was undoubtedly one of the greatest scientists in the history of mankind, but he also made mistakes. He believed that the Universe is motionless, its size remains unchanged, and it is restrained by a powerful antigravitational field. After a long argument with Einstein, this hypothesis was refuted by the Russian mathematician Alexander Fridman.

Cold fusion is the "holy grail" of chemists, a theory about the implementation of nuclear fusion without ultra-high temperatures. In 1989, Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons announced that they had successfully carried out CNF, but their experiment could not be repeated by anyone. At the moment, the hypothesis has not received convincing evidence.

Ancient misconceptions, such as the sun orbiting the earth, or more modern ones, such as that Venus is green and habitable, have been refuted with the development of astronomy and astronautics. What other well-known scientific hypotheses turned out to be wrong?

If the connection between the hypothesis and the consequences following from it does not cause doubts and if, further, the verification of some of the consequences reveals its falsity, then the falsity of the hypothesis is necessarily deduced from this.

As already mentioned, the logical mechanism for such a refutation of the hypothesis is based on the use of the negating mode of conditional-categorical inference (see examples on p. 74). The relationship between logical reason and effect is such that the falsity of the second is incompatible with the truth of the first. From the parcels "If a patient has diabetes mellitus, then his blood must contain sugar" and "This patient's blood does not contain sugar" follows a conclusion, refuting the doctor's assumption "This patient has diabetes." According to the cosmological theory of Kant (XVIII century), the solar system arose from a once existing rotating mass of matter, from which clots of matter were separated, which became planets and their satellites. It followed from the hypothesis that all the planets and their satellites rotate in the same direction, the later discovered reverse rotation of some satellites is incompatible with the main idea of \u200b\u200bthe hypothesis and, therefore, is sufficient to refute it.

At first glance, a rejection of a hypothesis is an indicator of failure, wrong direction of research, wrong methods, etc. Is it so? It has already been said that a hypothesis ideally contains the idea of \u200b\u200bself-denial: it must either turn into reliable knowledge (lose its hypotheses), or, being untenable, give way to other hypotheses. If a hypothesis is proven (turned into reliable knowledge), its productivity is undeniable. But does the refutation of the hypothesis (establishment of its falsity) have any cognitive meaning? It would seem not: after all, the efforts spent on its development did not lead to the discovery of the truth.

However, such an understanding of the process of cognition does not correspond to its complexity. The development of knowledge is not a straight line connecting one absolute truth with another; it is inseparable from mistakes, from all kinds of delusions. From this point of view, the refutation of the hypothesis also has a certain cognitive value, it allows you to overcome delusion and thereby contributes to the search for truth. What has been said is confirmed by the examples given above: having convinced himself of the erroneousness of the preliminary diagnosis, the doctor continues to look for a real illness, etc. in the XVII-XVIII centuries the hypothesis of the existence of "weightless substances" - caloric, phlogiston, magnetic fluids).

"Progress does not consist in replacing an incorrect theory with a correct one, but in replacing one incorrect theory with another incorrect but refined one."
Stephen Hawking

At a time when science was making its first steps, hypotheses were often built on the basis of insufficient and unreliable information. The lack of raw data forced researchers to strain their imaginations. The authors did not skimp on incredible, stunning assumptions, because there were no predecessors that would limit the flight of thought. Putting a blank sheet on the table, the scientist took a pen in his hands and described the structure of the universe as he pleases. It often turned out to be amazing nonsense. But with a true genius, even mistakes led to ingenious conclusions.

HOLLOW EARTH

The hollow Earth hypothesis now has very few supporters, even among true connoisseurs of parascientific concepts. The idea of \u200b\u200bnested spheres also died in science fiction. Even in magic-infused and dragon-infested fantasy worlds, the "hollow Earth" is far too insulting to the laws of physics. But about a century ago, the underground world was given its due by the best authors working in the genre of fantasy. This topic was touched upon by Edgar Poe, Jules Verne, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Edgar Burroughs, Vladimir Obruchev. The hollow Earth hypothesis has never been generally accepted, but it got into the category of frankly anti-scientific relatively recently. There was a period when it was very popular, largely due to its noble origin. In the middle of the 17th century, it was put forward by René Descartes, the great French philosopher and mathematician, who formulated the principles of rational knowledge of the world underlying the scientific method.

As the first scientist in the modern sense of the word, Descartes, naturally, could not rely on the works of his predecessors. And in the absence of a better one, he built his hypotheses on the basis of "Aristotelian physics", the traces of which we can still see in fantasy worlds. According to Aristotle, any substance consists of four elements mixed in various proportions - earth, water, air and fire. The elements, in turn, appeared as a result of the decomposition of the prototype matter of the Universe - ether.

Even in 2008, the glowing phlogiston still fills the planet's interior. What can we say about the 17th-19th centuries? (still from the film "Journey to the Center of the Earth")

Trying to explain how the solar system came into being, Descartes came to conclusions that were not far from the truth. The luminary and the planets, in his opinion, arose as a result of the compression and twisting of the primary matter. Only not a gas-dust nebula, but a space-filling ether. It was the disintegration of compressed proto-matter, accompanied by the release of phlogiston (fiery matter), that made the stars shine! Descartes considered the sunspots to be either solidifying or re-melting stone islands. The Earth, according to Descartes, was also a small luminary, and the ether in its bowels disintegrated thousands of years ago. The stone islands merged and turned into crust, the water, freed from the light elements - phlogiston and air - that had evaporated into space, filled the oceans. But spots on the Sun prove that the cosmic bodies formed by the thickening of proto-matter freeze starting from the surface. And by the time the crust emerges, there should still be not decayed ether inside ... Being a mixture of all four elements, ether, even compressed, should have approximately three times less density than the heaviest element - earth (she is a stone). Consequently, after the disintegration of the ether, the stone will occupy only a third of the inner volume of the planet. The Earth will be a "matryoshka" of several solid spheres separated by layers of air and water.

The hypothesis was criticized in the scientific community, but it also gained many supporters who were able to thoroughly explore the underworld and make a lot of amazing discoveries without getting up from their chairs. So, for example, it was assumed that the bowels of the planet are brightly lit, since the shining phlogiston accumulates under the arches, that the climate there is warm and humid due to the predominance of the elements of air and water, and that it is in the bowels of the Earth that the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel are found. Why not? The era of the great geographical discoveries on the surface of the planet has almost ended, and the Jews who were taken into the Assyrian captivity were never found.

Foreseeing that the writers of the future would need a lot of room to accommodate monsters, Edmund Halley prudently divided the underworld into upper, middle and lower.

In 1692, the hypothesis received support from the great English astronomer Edmond Halley. Halley calculated that, in addition to a core the size of Mercury, the Earth has three concentric shells 800 kilometers thick. Calculations, according to the custom of that time, were made on the basis of considerations of a general philosophical nature, but Halley brought in favor of the hypothesis and an argument that remained relevant for two centuries. Earth's magnetic poles do not match geographic ones! This means that inside the planet there must be some kind of massive body rotating independently of the crust. At the same time, Halley explained the aurora borealis, blaming them on the same phlogiston leaving the "inner atmospheres" through the holes at the poles.

Halley's hypothesis, explaining the strange behavior of the compass needle, was indeed confirmed. It is now known that the iron-nickel core of the planet rotates out of sync with the crust

Of course, as knowledge accumulated, more and more questions arose about the hollow Earth hypothesis. Phlogiston and ether were gradually eroded from physics. After the discovery of the tidal forces of the Sun and the Moon, it was impossible to explain how the system of nested spheres of the Earth remains stable. Nevertheless, even at the beginning of the 19th century, the main goal of the planned expeditions to the poles was considered to be the search for holes through which it would be possible to crawl inside the globe. Only at the turn of the last century did the hypothesis of a hollow earth finally become marginal. Instead of the lost tribes of Israel, Hitler now lives on the inner spheres, having escaped from the surface through the polar hole in Antarctica, aliens flying on saucers and, it seems, giants from the drowned Lemuria.

GLOBAL FLOOD

If the hypothesis of a hollow earth, despite the support of such titans as Descartes and Halley, was accepted by the scientific community with great caution, then the reality of the Flood in the 17th-19th centuries was beyond doubt. To one degree or another, all natural scientists working at that time paid attention to the causes and circumstances of the global flood.

Real evidence of the flood was discovered only in the last century during excavations of the Sumerian city of Ur. The flood, coinciding in time with the biblical, flooded, of course, not the entire planet, but only a small part of Mesopotamia

Work in this area continues to this day by "creation scientists". And just Sainsfriks who study mythical events with the same enthusiasm with which "British scientists" diagnose Gollum from photography. But there is a fundamental difference between old and recent flood research. Unlike modern proponents of intelligent design, the scientists of the 18th century were people who were sincere believers. Accordingly, they considered the Flood not as a hypothesis in need of confirmation, but as a fact. Science is meant to explain facts rationally, and no one made exceptions for the Flood. After all, scientists did not believe that we are talking about a miracle violating the laws of physics. Miracles, as is clear even from the tale of the goldfish, happen instantly. The water, according to the Scripture, came for a long time. This means that the Lord did not bring it down to the Earth at once, but only launched a certain physical mechanism with limited performance.

The study of the flood was of great importance for the science of that time. After all, the history of the Earth in those days was counted only in thousands of years. Of course, there were eruptions, rivers flooded, rain and wind eaten away stones, but from the chronicles it followed that the intensity of these processes in the past was not higher. So, for all the scars on the face of the planet, all sedimentary formations, the appearance of which could not be explained by the ordinary and brief (by the standards of geology) impact of the elements, only the flood was responsible!

The hypothesis of boiling underground oceans was generally confirmed. According to modern concepts, the molten mantle of the planet contains ten times more water than the hydrosphere.

From the beginning, flood behavior split into two competing streams. Some scientists, referring to Scripture, which speaks only of a monstrous rainstorm, believed that the atmosphere was the source of the water that flooded the Earth. But they could not explain where the water came from in the clouds, or where it then went. Other researchers, citing geysers as an example, argued that the waters actually poured out from the bowels of the planet and, having cooled, went into them. The “open skies” in this hypothesis turned out to be a secondary effect. Underground cavities spewed boiling water, which then evaporated and rained down. Both versions had weaknesses. If the water came from above, the grandiose streams, rushing from the still un-flooded hills to the seas, should have left traces noticeable even thousands of years later. They were searched for and never found. The fountains that hit from the bottom of the oceans would certainly have driven colossal tidal waves to the shores. And a tsunami would have destroyed Noah's Ark!

Studying the fossilized shells found high in the mountains, Mikhail Lomonosov was one of the first to come to the conclusion that such finds do not prove, but refute the flood hypothesis. The water could not have raised the clams so high. The relief changed - rise from the bottom of the sea

The "atmospheric" hypothesis, however, was rapidly losing its supporters. The question with the Ark, of course, remained unresolved, but geologists met arguments in favor of the second theory at every step. Only mighty waves could throw the shells of sea mollusks high into the mountains and scatter huge boulders throughout Europe ... And from the way they were scattered, it turned out that the water came from the north - somewhere underground oceans burst out. Probably, the researchers believed, mountain ranges saved from the monstrous waves of Noah. It remained to work out the details - for example, to calculate the speed of the flow of water capable of carrying a boulder the size of a three-story building ... But the result was the same every time. The researcher was convinced that this could not be. The advancing and then receding waters of the flood should have left a uniform, albeit changing depending on the relief, imprint on the entire surface of the Earth. Naturalists who studied the sediments of sea and river floods had an excellent idea of \u200b\u200bhow the geological consequences of the flood should look exactly in this or that place. And they did not find anything like it. The cautious murmur quickly grew into a full-fledged riot on the ship. At first, doubts arose as to the accuracy of the biblical description of the disaster. And then in the reality of this event. Finally it turned out that no one needed the flood at all. As a subject of research. Trying to comprehend the mechanism of the global flood and find its traces, scientists made many discoveries that radically changed the idea of \u200b\u200bthe planet's past. So, studying sedimentary rocks, geologists have established that the age of the Earth is estimated at least millions of years (the methods of those times did not allow dating more ancient deposits). And the boulders brought by the flood suddenly turned out to be traces of the glacier that once covered Europe.

LAMARKISM

While there were fierce battles in geology between supporters of the atmospheric and tectonic flood hypotheses, there was a suspicious silence on another part of the front - in biology. For if geologists viewed the flood as an event at least partly amenable to scientific knowledge, then the creation of the living world, according to Scripture, was a miracle, and there was nothing to study here. In addition, the version of the origin of life proposed by the Bible was not interesting to science. The intervention of supernatural forces did not explain why the Earth was inhabited by such species of animals.

The biologists were in no hurry to publish their seditious conclusions, but distrust of the Scriptures arose in their midst very early and took root deeply. Back in 1735, Karl Linnaeus published the work "The System of Nature", where he proposed a classification of the animal world, which, with minor changes, is used to this day. And although in the preface the author mentioned that all animals and birds were created at the same time and remain unchanged, in the work itself the species were divided into genera and families. That very transparently hinted at the presence of a common ancestor in similar species.

Nobody expressed any claims to the terminology introduced by Linnaeus. Even then, it seemed obvious that the similarity of living beings was caused by kinship. Nevertheless, at this stage, scientific thought stalled, faced with an obstacle much more serious than the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Thinkers of the middle of the 18th century could not comprehend the causes of speciation.

It was believed that for millennia, humanity existed in a crumbling and degrading world. Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise. The abundant Golden Age was replaced by the cruel Iron Age. The ancient wisdom, once revealed by the gods to the first ancestors, was forgotten. The soil was depleted. And each next generation was inferior to the previous one. That any person who lived to the gray hair could readily confirm ... Until the 17th century, inclusive, there was no idea of \u200b\u200bprogress in human thinking. And even the latest inventions were considered only a "rediscovery" of what the infallible Aristotle knew for sure. It's just that the parchment has not survived.

In the 18th century, it became impossible to ignore progress. Having thoroughly raged in military affairs and manufacturing, he eventually spread to the humanitarian sphere. Pulling on the thought, the philosophers formulated the concept of neo-humanism, according to which movement towards perfection was still possible. But only as a result of volitional human activity.

All fossil bones have long been considered the remains of giants who died during the flood. After all, Scripture did not mention other extinct species

This discovery seemed to be of no use to biology. The differences between modern and fossil species were still explained using the Cuvier hypothesis, according to which all species are unchanged and have existed since the beginning of time, but with each flood the diversity of living things on Earth decreases.

At the beginning of the 19th century, it became clear that the fossils are arranged in layers in an orderly manner, which means that the antediluvian animals did not die in an instant. Because of this, scientists eventually counted as many as twenty-seven Floods!

It was only in 1809 that Jean Baptiste Lamarck's Philosophy of Zoology showed science a way out of the impasse. The naturalist, substantiating his point of view with arguments that were strikingly illiterate even by the standards of the beginning of the 19th century, argued: the striving for perfection and complication is an integral property of matter, including living matter. It was Lamarck who first introduced the concepts of the evolution of species and the spontaneous generation of life. He also proposed a mechanism for evolutionary changes. They occurred, according to the author, as a result of exercises. For example, running led to lengthening of the legs, and then this acquired quality was inherited.

The weakness of Lamarck's hypothesis was evident from the outset. The legs, no matter how much you run, did not become longer, and the acquired qualities were not inherited. And many hereditary qualities - for example, patronizing coloring - could not be improved at all by exercise. Nevertheless, fair criticism did not prevent Lamarckism from gaining many adherents. For the idea of \u200b\u200bcultivation through exercise was ideally consistent with the philosophy of humanism.

Along with neo-humanism, dialectical philosophy developed at the end of the 18th century. But deciphering Hegel's works, written in an impossibly complex, dark and confusing language, took several decades before it was possible to understand: matter moves due to the struggle of opposites. This thought gradually took over the minds, creating the basis for the theory of natural selection.

It may seem strange, but Lamarck's hypothesis, rejecting the Creator's involvement in the origin of life and species, did not cause outrage. An educated public easily accepted the idea of \u200b\u200bevolution as the result of individual effort and a metaphysical "pursuit of excellence." But the publication in 1853 of Darwin's Origin of Species had the effect of a bomb. Supporters of the ideas of Lamarck and Darwin rushed at each other with such fury that the awakened adherents of "intelligent design" literally did not have time to insert a word.

Survived in this confrontation, as it should be according to Darwin, the strongest. The point was set at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the development of genetics. The autopsy of the mechanism of heredity showed that in vivo exercises cannot be reflected in the offspring. Thus, in science, the question was closed once and for all.

The merits of Jean Baptiste Lamarck are now forgotten even by creationists. Yes, his hypothesis turned out to be wrong. But in science, a correctly posed question is more valuable than a found answer. Scientists who comprehend the mysteries of the structure of the Earth from the standpoint of the thickening of the ether, explained glacial deposits in the framework of the flood hypothesis and developed the idea of \u200b\u200b"evolution by exercise", moved, of course, in the wrong direction. But along the way, they made many great discoveries.

For many millennia of its existence, mankind has accumulated vast scientific knowledge about the world around it. For example, it is scientifically proven that the earth rotates on an axis; that light travels in a straight line in most cases; that a thunderstorm is an electrical discharge, etc. But as a result of what and how did this and other knowledge come about? What is the method of scientific knowledge of the surrounding world?

The method of scientific knowledge of the surrounding world includes several stages. The first one is this observation of phenomena.

Observation is carried out with the help of human senses and devices. For example, as a result of everyday observations, a person has established that opaque bodies give a shadow on a sunny day (Fig. 13). From observations he accumulates facts (observation results) indicating that the size of the shadow changes during the day (Fig. 14). Its length is greatest in the morning and evening, and the smallest at noon. The shadow may be blurry or completely absent. How can all these facts be explained? For this hypothesized (guess, guess).

Figure: thirteen

Figure: fourteen

There may be several hypotheses. In the considered example, the hypothesis is that light propagates in a straight line. A hypothesis can sometimes be erroneous and incorrect. Then a new hypothesis is put forward.

A hypothesis explains known facts and predicts new ones that are still unknown. For example, that shadow and partial shade can form if there are several light sources or one source, but it is large (its size is comparable to the distance to an opaque object that gives a shadow).

Experiments with two light sources (Fig. 15) and with a large source (Fig. 16) showed that the size of the shadow, the presence of shadows and penumbraes confirm the hypothesis of rectilinear light propagation.

Figure: fifteen

Figure: sixteen

If the hypothesis is confirmed, it becomes by law... A hypothesis exists until facts appear that contradict it. Schematically, the scientific path of knowledge can be represented as follows.

Think and answer

1. What are the sources of our knowledge about physical phenomena? Give examples.
2. What is the basis for the hypothesis? Could the hypothesis be wrong? Give examples that you know from other sciences.
3. What is the role of experience in scientific knowledge?
4. Why can't astrology be considered a science?

Interesting to know!

The intro to the television program "Obvious-Incredible" contains the words of Alexander Pushkin:

“How many wonderful discoveries we have
Prepare the spirit of enlightenment
And experience, son of difficult mistakes,
And a genius, a friend of paradoxes,
And chance, god-inventor. "

What is Alexander Sergeevich writing about? Try to decipher his statement. Ask your teacher or parents for help if needed.

Homework

In physics, the names of genius thinkers are known, such as Democritus (Fig. 17), Aristotle (Fig. 18), Galileo (Fig. 19), etc.

Figure: 17

Figure: eighteen

Figure: 19

Get acquainted with the biography of any of the named thinkers (at your request) and write in a notebook (0.5 pages) the most interesting, in your opinion, facts from their scientific activities. Information can be obtained from the Internet, encyclopedic dictionary and other sources.

We are used to trusting scientists. We refer to them when we want to give more weight to our own words, we quote them, we involve them as experts. But they are just people and can also be wrong. Even the great ones.

1. Alchemy

In the Middle Ages, the idea of \u200b\u200bturning lead into gold did not seem as crazy as it does today. And this is easy to explain. The first experiments in the field of chemistry were more than promising - substances mixed in a certain way changed color, sparkled, exploded, evaporated, grew, shrank, exuded unusual odors ... The conclusion was obvious - why shouldn't the dull gray metal turn shining yellow? So the search began for a reagent capable of performing such a transformation - the mythical "philosopher's stone". In parallel, there was a search for the "elixir of life", which also remained a dream.

2. Phlogiston

Phlogiston is such a "fiery substance" which was "discovered" by Johann Becher in 1667. The scientist believed that this substance is contained in all combustible substances and evaporates when they are burned. Many scientists bought into Becher's arguments and tried to use the phlogiston theory to explain some of the phenomena associated with fire and combustion. For example, they believed that the flame goes out when all the phlogiston is released; that air is necessary for combustion because it absorbs phlogiston; and we breathe to rid the body of the same phlogiston. The phlogiston theory lasted until the late 18th century, when the oxygen theory of combustion emerged.

3. "The rain follows the plow"

Now it seems incredible, but once upon a time there was a very popular theory among Americans and Australians, according to which if you work the land hard enough and for a long time, it will certainly rain. This idea was not questioned, because ... it was confirmed. No, of course, the plow did not cause any rain. However, in some regions (such as the American West, for example), long periods of drought are invariably followed by rainy seasons. And if you walk a long, long time with a plow in the field, then sooner or later the cycle changes.

4. Earth is only 6,000 years old

Once upon a time, the historical accuracy of the events described in the Bible was not in doubt, despite some inconsistencies. Take, for example, the age of the planet. In the 17th century, an Irish archbishop calculated, based on biblical chronology, that the earth was created in 4004 BC. His findings have been recognized by mainstream science for nearly 200 years. And modern calculations based on radiological dating make it possible to determine the age of the planet somewhat more accurately. And according to these data, our planet is no less than 4.5 billion years old.

5. Atom - the smallest particle in existence

The idea that matter consists of small particles (atoms) has been familiar to mankind for at least a thousand years, but that there is something even smaller, scientists began to guess only in the 20th century: Thompson discovered the electron, Chadwick discovered the neutron, Rutherford created a planetary model of the atom ... Since then we have come a long way, which culminated in the discovery of the Higgs boson.

6. DNA was not considered very important at first

However, for quite a long time, no one attached much importance to nucleic acids. The scientists considered proteins to be the material transmitting hereditary information - it seemed to them that DNA was too simple for such work. It was only in 1953 that American biochemists Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA and explained to the rest of the world how exactly a simple molecule can cope with such a complex task.

7. Germs and surgery

Until the end of the 19th century, as crazy as it sounds, doctors did not see the need to wash their hands before grabbing a scalpel. The result is continuous gangrene. The infection was explained, as a rule, by "bad air" and the disease was blamed for the imbalance of the "four body fluids" (blood, mucus, black and yellow bile). The revolutionary theory that microbes can be the cause of disease has long been ignored in the scientific world. And only in the 1860s, when the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur got down to business, she began to slowly gain the attention of doctors. And then doctors like Joseph Lister finally convinced their colleagues of the need to wash wounds and sterilize surgical instruments.

8. Earth is the center of the universe

In the second century, the famous astronomer Ptolemy built a model of the solar system with the Earth in the center. This model was considered an absolute and unshakable truth for the entire Western Christian world right up to the 15th century, when it was supplanted by the heliocentric (i.e. in the center of which is the Sun) system of the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus was not the first to come up with the idea that the earth revolves around the sun, but he was the first to be heeded.

9. Circulatory system

We all know how important the heart is - you don't need to be a doctor. But in ancient Rome, even doctors thought differently. The famous physician Claudius Galen (130-200 BC) was convinced that blood is formed in the liver as a result of the combination of digested food with air. Then, through the veins, portions of blood (each time new) enter the heart, and from it through the arteries they spread throughout the body. Organs use blood as fuel. Galen's theory was not questioned until 1628, when the English physician William Harvey published his work entitled "Anatomical study of the movement of the heart and blood in animals", which proved that blood returns to the heart in a closed cycle.