Funerals, Thought Leaders, and the Need to Question Authority
German physicist, Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, is credited with observing that “science advances one funeral at a time.” What did he mean? What we call “modern science” is in fact a set of theories advanced by the day’s leading scientists, teachers, authors, and textbook writers. (Included among this group would be Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krause, Stephen Weinberg, Leon Lederman, John Gribben, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennet). These individuals “control the airwaves” by defining the body of scientific knowledge that they hand down to their students, television commentators, readers, and the public at large. Boosted by their association with Science, the most authoritative intellectual discipline, these thought leaders direct the course of our worldview and determine the theories and ideas we are supposed to believe in. These ideas and theories include the Big Bang (the world was created in a gigantic explosion of matter, space, and time), cosmic inflation (the matter present at the Big Bang expanded by 50 orders of magnitude in...
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