How to Catch a Gravity Wave - Part 2

"Thousands of years of civilization passed. Yet, for all their busy history and cleverness, the humans were stuck in a thinking rut..."

Sometimes the stories were based on what seemed like obvious common sense. Clearly the sun traveled across the sky every day, and clearly something had to pull it.

"..you are allowed to learn and even to change your mind."

How to Get Out of a Thinking Rut

Thousands of years of civilization passed. Yet, for all their busy history and cleverness, the humans were stuck in a thinking rut. They were just making stuff up. Stuff to explain physical , biological, and social phenomena and processes. Sometimes it was imaginative, clever, even charming, but it was still almost all wrong.

We were stuck with various versions of this one for about 2000 years. They used it to explain different personality types also. Always fun to think we've got it all figured out, but this was all wrong, wrong, wrong.

Strangely, no matter how obviously wrong or unhelpful the made-up stories often were, the humans felt that once they had a story, they had to, no MUST, stick to it — as well as make everyone else stick to it. Those that dared to think differently, or even question, were often treated quite badly.

Circumstantial evidence can be misleading. Be careful about jumping to conclusions.
Galileo almost got burned at the stake for disagreeing with the bottom one.

Then, just a fraction of a fraction of a moment in the gravity waves' life span, there was an unlikely period of open-minded exploration. It might be more accurate to say a moment of just plain old common sense. Some humans in certain places, started to open their minds and think outside the "make-stuff-up-and-stick-to-it" box. This astonishing and unlikely period in human history covered several hundred years and has been given names such as the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment. I say it was unlikely, because given the human propensity for literally hating story changers, it was extremely difficult, and usually dangerous, for these thought pioneers to change other human minds. Even with test data that proved the made-up stories wrong!!

"Galileo Galilei showing the Doge of Venice how to use his telescope". Galileo championed repeated careful experiments to gather accurate data to prove or disprove a hypotheses. (credit: Photo of Fresco by Bertini )

Cosmically speaking, the gravity waves were now extremely close. They had traveled over 99.9999% of their journey. It was still a sure bet that they, like all the others, would pass through the blue planet's solar system without detection.

Reason and Logic over Dogma and Superstition

Early thinkers and experimenters named William Gilbert, Galileo Galilei, and Robert Hooke, were among the first to spell it out.

The following, in my words, sums up their thoughts: "Don't make up stories, then imagine or insist that reality fits those stories, ignoring, even suppressing, anything that contradicts them. Make a shrewd assumption based on logic, reason, data, honest open-minded observations, and known facts. Then test it. If the data repeatedly verifies, then you may have found something useful. You can maybe even call it a "fact" or a "truth", if the data, verified by others over time, continues to verify it.

"Emilie du Chatelet" (portrait by Latour). By analysis and, you guessed it, evaluating careful experimental data, Emilie du Chatelet showed that kinetic energy is proportional to mV^2, not mV, as Newton had believed; and that energy and momentum were not the same thing. Disagreeing with Newton back then was pretty dangerous also, but data won the day. Her translation of Newton's Principia into French is still considered the leading French translation. She also developed Newton's proofs using Calculus, which he hadn't included in the Principia, feeling it would be too hard for most people to understand.

If the test data doesn't verify, then move on. Get over it. It's no skin off anybody's nose. Chill out. Nobody needs to be killed over it.

Even more wondrous, and relaxing, if new data and information comes along, you are allowed to learn from it and even to change your mind! Isn't that cool?

Still, it wasn't easy. Such a simple, logical, and seemingly non-threatening thinking method, was a hard pill for much of humanity to swallow (and still seems to be for many). But the practitioners of this new way of learning, who came to call themselves "scientists", courageously persevered.

Decade after decade they kept learning. Step by step, they built on what other inquisitive, persistent, and brave, scientists had learned before them. Sometimes they were penalized, imprisoned, even killed, for finding out things that seemed to disagree with the made-up stories.

Within 150 years of the gravity waves' arrival, there was no longer any doubt concerning the power of the scientific method. Accurate and real knowledge, gained by using the scientific method, resulted in marvels of human engineering and science that were previously inconceivable. Advances and technologies that seemed miraculous at the time, became commonplace.

Next page: Conclusion: How They Did It!

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