It is this urge for knowledge which accounts for the rise and development of the sciences. Not satisfied with the superficial appearance of thins, as the ordinary man sees and knows them, chemistry searches for the component elements of bodies, their activities and energies, their nature and qualities, their workings and the laws of their combinations.
Gases (e.g. air), fluids (e.g. water) and solids (e.g. stones) are now understood to be, not bodies consisting of homogeneous material, but chemical compounds of very divergent elements united in definite quantities according to definite proportions under definite laws through the expenditure of definite proportions under definite laws through the expenditure of definite amounts of energy. Not satisfied with the ordinary explanations of physical happenings in nature, physics attempts to discover their underlying causes and to chart their course of action from start to finish.
Not satisfied with the common view that life in all its phases and functions is an inexplicable mystery, physiology and biology and kindred sciences have probed deeply into the hidden recesses of living organs and tissues and have wrested from them many secrets hitherto unsuspected.
Many things concerning life have advanced into a clearer stage of scientific knowledge: among others, cell organization and function, the origin and growth of organisms, bacterial infection with corresponding medical treatment and international disease control, aseptic surgery, the proper distribution of nutritive values in foods. Similar progress has been made in the other sciences, due to the urge for deeper knowledge inherent in the human mind.
All of this shows that scientific investigation of such problems is not a futile occupation. In many instances age-old spontaneous convictions have been confirmed by science, and in other instances they have been disproved. Many supposedly certain truths have had to be discarded, to give place to more reliable information. Thus, to mention a case in point, the Ptolemaic geocentric system, in which the earth was considered to be at the center of the universe with the sun and moon and stars revolving around it, has been proved by science to be false and has had to make room for the Copernican heliocentric system, in which the earth was relegated to the secondary position of one among many planets revolving around the sun.
This one instance has an important bearing on the problem of spontaneous conviction and knowledge. From the standpoint of human experience, nothing appears plainer than that the sun revolves around the earth. Yet we now know that the moon does, and the sun does not; but to all appearances both sun and moon travel through the sky in the same way. Similarly, due to the atmospheric refraction of light, both sun and moon are seen in the east before they are above the horizon, and in the west they are seen after they are below the horizon. Both are seen as deep-red in color when they rise and set; and both balloon out to a number of times their normal size, with bulging sides and flattened upper and lower poles; they shrink as they ride to the zenith and grow larger as they descend.
Actually, however, the sun and the moon do not increase and decrease in bulk, and at no time are they red in color. Again, the sun never actually grows warmer in the course of the day, nor is it any hotter in summer than in winter, nor does it change its position in the sky during the seasons of the year: its position in the firmament and its temperature are always the same. But the testimony of our senses seems perfectly clear regarding these changes, and mankind for thousands of years has had a firm, spontaneous conviction of the truth of this testimony. And even though science has furnished indubitable proof that our spontaneous conviction is wrong, our sense-experience still testifies to the same phenomena; but the fact remains that spontaneous convictions can be radically wrong, even when based on apparently irreproachable evidence of the sense. This is borne out by many instances besides the case mentioned above.
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