I have a certain cynicism about science that most people tend to consider rather incomprehensible. I suppose the reasons are varied. But I will give one reason that is a bit tough, when you get right down to it:
The Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
Sure, you know the pictures. Everybody knows that the Earth is, in fact, a sphere. That, of course is because everybody is an idiot and does not realize that the Earth is, in fact, oblong, thanks to its rotation bowing out the middle. That, of course, is not the least bit logical, actually, if you will follow me along the road. Because, after all:
The Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
As everyone knows since the days of Galileo, the Earth orbits around the Sun. This is, of course, absolutely wrong because Copernicus showed the Earth orbits around the Sun well before Galileo, so the famed Italian, his experiments on pendulums and gravity aside, just following in the footsteps of other folks. After this, Isaac Newton comes along and postulates the existence of gravity because he didn't have enough sense to get his damned head out of the way when an apple was clearly falling on it, and modern science was born. Rumor has it that people are still trying to come to grips with everything he said in his Principia despite the fact that Einstein came along and fucked everything up. Because, of course, the result of Einstein's work is that:
The Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
As Einstein pointed out, everything is, actually relative to how fast it is going. Time is relative. Length is relative. Space is relative. Everything is relative. Oddly, there is no evidence that Einstein spent any time in Appalachia when he came up with this theory. However, the results of this new way of looking at things came up with several interesting conclusions. For instance, there is no such thing as absolute time because time changes as you move closer to the speed of light. The faster you move, the slower time goes around you. As well, the faster you move, the smaller you become. I can't show you the equations, but look it up in a book and it will show them to you. And, of course:
The Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
The upshot of all this talk is that space can be curved by massive bodies. Objects such as stars can bend light around themselves because they are so massive, space is bent around them. Light bends because it needs to travel through space in order to get anywhere. As well, black holes can become enormous expanses of empty space to telescopes simply because any light that enters into their event horizon is gobbled up and destroyed. Of course, black holes and whatnot are well known these days, but what is not very well known from all this talk of bending light and black holes is the simple effect that Einstein's theories have on gravity. In fact, I am using them to show that
The Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
As I read in Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, the earth does not move in a vaguely ellipsoid path around the sun. In fact, the earth is actually moving in a straight line through space. This may seem completely counterintuitive to you, but it does, in fact make sense. The earth is moving in a straight line through space because the sun curves space itself, allowing the earth the move in a straight line even as it moves in its orbit. Of course, this is the key that will allow me to show that:
The Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
The same action is true of the moon as it is of the earth. The moon travels in space that has been curved by the earth, even as it also moves in space that has been curved by the sun and as it moves in space that has been curved by the movement of the Milky Way galaxy, etc. Thus, the earth is curving space around itself. This is where things get very interesting, because
The Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
In order to allow any satellite from the moon to Sputnik to orbit the earth, the earth must be curving space. In fact, we can stand on the earth because it curves space, creating an effect that could easily be mistaken for gravity -- a concept that is now entirely out of date. Thus, space is curved on the Earth's surface. Thus, the curvature of the earth is, in fact, an illusion. The earth is actually flat, it is only space curving around the flat disk of earth that creates the impression that the globe is roughly spherical. Thus, as I have said, the Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.
The purpose of this exercise was to show a reason why I am a bit cynical about science as a philosophy. The very idea of science is that general rules about the world can be gathered from observation. And from these general rules, truths can be inferred and derived. Unfortunately, the problem is that the example I have given above shows that the actual observations may be incorrect by the very rules that are inferred from them. Thus, it's hard for me to take science entirely seriously sometimes. After all, any idiot can look at a satellite picture of the earth and see that it is round, but science is now saying
The Earth is flat. Prove me wrong.