Scientific MistakesParis, March 20
th, 1867 – Group of Mr. Lampérière
“Just as the body has its organs of locomotion, nutrition, respiration, etc., so the Spirit has various faculties that relate respectively to each situation of its being. If the body has its infancy, if the members of this body are weak and feeble, unable to move the loads that they will later be able to lift without difficulty, the Spirit, first of all, possesses faculties that must, like everything else that exists, evolve from childhood to youth and from youth to middle age. Will you ask the child in the cradle to act with the speed, safety, and skill of a grown man? No, that would be madness, wouldn't that? One can only ask of each one what fits within the framework of their strengths and knowledge. To ask someone, who has never touched a book of mathematics or physics, to reason on any branch of the knowledge that depends on these sciences, would be as illogical as to require an exact description of a distant land, from a Parisian, who has never left the walls of his native town, and sometimes of his suburb!
To judge something soundly, it is therefore necessary to have as complete a knowledge of it as possible. It would be absurd to submit to a fluency reading test someone that is just beginning to spell; and yet! ... man, this human-animal endowed with reason, this powerful creature, to whom everything is an obstacle in the book of the worlds, this naughty child that barely stutters the first words of true science, this mystified appearance, claims to read, without hesitation, the most indecipherable pages of the manual that nature presents to him every day. The unknown is born under his feet; it touches him on the side, in front, on the back, everywhere, everything is just problems without solution, or whose known solutions are illogical and irrational, and the grown child turns his eyes away from the book, saying: I know you, on to another! ... Unaware of things, he clings to the causes of these things, and without a compass, he embarks on the stormy sea of preconceived systems, that inevitably leads him to a shipwreck, whose results are doubt and sketicism! Fanaticism, the son of error, holds him under its staff; for, know it well, the fanatic is not the one who believes without proof and who would give his life for a misunderstood faith; there are fanatics of skepticism, as there are fanatics of faith!
The road to truth is narrow, and it is necessary to probe the terrain before advancing, so as not to rush into the abysses, that surrounds it right to left.
Hurry slowly, says the wisdom of the nations, and as always when it agrees with common sense, the wisdom of the nations is right. Do not leave enemies behind you, and only advance when you are sure that you do not have to turn back. God is patient because he is eternal; man, who has eternity before him, can also be patient.
If he judges by appearance, if he is mistaken and admits his error in the future, it is logical; but if he pretends that he cannot be mistaken, if he assigns some limit to human knowledge, the child reappears on the water with his caprices and his helpless anger! ... The young horse has not yet thrown his strings; he gets carried away, he jumps! The burnt blood circulates in his veins! … Leave him, age will know how to calm his passion without destroying him, and he will derive more profit from it by measuring the expenditure more wisely!
At birth, man saw the plains formed by earth and rock stretching without limit under his feet; an azure plains dotted with scintillating fires extended over his head, and seemed to move regularly; he concluded that earth was a wide, rugged plateau, surmounted by a dome, animated by constant movement. Reporting everything to himself, he made himself the center of a system created for him, and the static earth beheld the sun, revolving in the celestial plains. Today, the sun no longer turns and the earth has started to move; the first point would not be perhaps difficult to elucidate according to the Bible, because, if Joshua one day ordered the sun to stop, it is seen nowhere that he commanded it to resume its course.
The human intelligence of today belies the works of the intelligences of a more remote epoch, and thus, from age to age, to the origin; and yet, despite the lessons of the past, although he realizes, through precedents, that yesterday's utopia is often tomorrow’s reality, man persists in saying: No, you won't go further! Who could do more than us? Intelligence is at the top of the scale; after us, one can only go down! … And yet, those who say this are the witnesses, the propagators and the promoters of the wonders accomplished by current science. They made many discoveries that have singularly modified the theories of their predecessors; but what does it matter! … The ego speaks in them higher than reason. Enjoying a royalty for a day, they cannot admit that tomorrow they will be subjected to a power that the future keeps from their sight.
They deny the Spirit, as they denied the movement of the earth! … Let us be sorry for them, and console ourselves for their blindness, by telling us that what is cannot remain eternally hidden; light cannot become shadow; truth cannot become error; darkness disappears before dawn.
O Galileo! ... wherever you are, you rejoice, because it moves ... and we too can rejoice, because our own land, our world, intelligence, the Spirit also has its movement misunderstood, unknown, but that will soon become as obvious as the axioms recognized by science.
François Arago.”
