As a matter of fact...

摘要

It's too easy, with the benefit of modernity, hindsight, and all that, to regard science as the most fearless, objective, apolitical, democratic, and open-minded of human endeavors—the seeker of truth. Never mind anything by divine right. It was, in fact, a panic-stricken reaction to a sudden shortage of truth that triggered the emergence of modern science. Throughout the 16th century, as it gradually dawned on everybody that Columbus hadn't, after all, hit some islands off Japan or India (where he was headed at the time) but that he had in fact come across an entirely new continent, everything epistemological hit the fan. For a comfortable 2,000 years, life, the universe, and everything had been what Aristotle and the Bible said it was. And neither of them had ever mentioned America. So what was it doing there?