19 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
How Culture Influences Scientific Metaphors
If you believe the cosmos is made up of
omelette, you build instruments specifically designed to find traces
of intergalactic yolk. In that paradigm you reject phenomena like
pulsars and black holes as paranormal garbage. In an omelette
cosmos, the beginning of the universe becomes a chicken and egg
problem, doesn’t it?
Now, this definition of terms (like omelette universe) happens
all the time. The reason that we today refer to electricity in terms
of current is because in the eighteenth ...
2 
Electricity has a current because Franklin thought it flowed like water, mal-aria is named after "bad air" because people thought it was caused by that, and we define the Universe it terms of clockwork or information depending on the cultural innovations of the time.
