History of Science: What important ideas were initially ridiculed or rejected by experts?
Louis Pasteur and germ theory were ridiculed at first, as was Marshall and Warren's discovery that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. According to an interview with E.O. Wilson I recently watched, William Hamilton had a difficult time publishing his theory of kin selection.
What other important ideas were initially ridiculed or rejected by experts in academia or elsewhere?
What other important ideas were initially ridiculed or rejected by experts in academia or elsewhere?
Answer Wiki
Some important ideas that were initially ridiculed or rejected by experts include:
- the personal computer
- the endosymbiotic theory of evolution
- plate tectonics and continental drift
- quasicrystals
- Mendelian genetics
- Henry Ford
- Georg Cantor with the set thoery
- Ludwig Boltzmann with the atomic theory
8 Answers
There are two that come to mind from unrelated fields: the personal computer and the endosymbiotic theory. These are in addition to the most obvious example: the idea that the world is round (but we won't get into that).
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The personal computer (along with the Internet) is universally acknowledged to have ushered in a new era in human history: the information age.
It's hard to imagine now, but the idea of "a computer for ordinary people" was initially rejected.
Steve Wozniak was just building a computer for himself when he put together the archetype of the PC, the Apple I. [1] By fusing two concepts--symbol-input machines like typewrites and calculators with display-output machines like television screens--Wozniak incidentally stumbled upon a whole new technological paradigm.
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When Wozniak invented it, he was working for Hewlett-Packard. Since he fancied himself an engineer with integrity and loyalty, he felt he had a duty to tell HP about this new machine he designed while working for them. He thought it the "right thing" to do. So in the spring of 1976, he took the Apple I to his managers at HP.
As the story goes, Wozniak's "personal computer" was harshly received by HP. The company simply didn't understand why any ordinary person would need a computer with that particular form and functionality. It was just a hobbyist product to them. HP was apparently so insistent on the uselessness of such a device that they rejected Wozniak five times! [2]
While HP seems bone-headed in retrospect, one must consider that there was no such thing as modern software applications enabling the myriad uses of PCs today. This is before word processors, spreadsheets, photo and video editors, web browsers, and so forth. Computer functionality was fairly limited back then and their applied use across wide swaths of the population was very difficult to predict. The Apple I, after all, looked like this:
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Nevertheless, after Wozniak got the hint that HP wouldn't develop the concept, he agreed to form a company with Steve Jobs to sell them. The rest, as they say, is history!
See this short clip from Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999 movie) for a glimpse of the ridicule PCs initially received (starts at 1:01):
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In biology, Lynn Margulis argued passionately for the endosymbiotic theory, taking it from unaccepted hearsay to strong scientific consensus and approval.
For those not so familiar with the history of evolutionary biology, a short explanation is in order.
For the longest time, biologists believed that evolution only took place through vertical gene transfer (otherwise known as reproduction or procreation), where a parent would propagate their genes by producing offspring. [3]
Then, in the mid-20th century, it was postulated that there was another way to evolve: horizontal gene transfer (HGT). This mechanism would purportedly allow genes to propagate independently of reproduction. [4]
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For decades, this theory was unrecognized because there was insufficient evidence for biologists to universally agree upon (and it just seemed implausible given all that was known about microbiology at the time).
Enter Lynn Margulis. She was certain of HGT as an evolutionary mechanism and believed one of its primary drivers was endosymbiosis [5]: the engulfing of one organism by another as a gamble on survival benefits, thereby horizontally transferring genetic material. [6]
The standard example is that some organelles (sub-cellular bodies within cells) don't share DNA from their cell's nucleus, but from DNA from other organisms that must have been swallowed by the 'master' organism.
![]()
Endosymbiosis had many important implications. For one, it helped explain Antibiotic Resistance. It also suggested that HGT could apply to the evolution of all organisms, leading to new theories on the giant "tree of life" and how it may be more of an interconnected matrix rather than a top-down hierarchy. [6]
As John Baez states in his obituary of Margulis,
From the 1970s onwards, new tools finally allowed scientists to compare genetic material within and between different cells, confirming that in certain species, DNA was inherited from sources outside the cells' nuclei. [8]
The evidence was slow to come at first, but eventually Margulis' argument won out. The discovery of HGT and endosymbiosis, contested as they were for decades, were landmark moments in our understanding of evolution.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
[2] http://www.appleinsider.c
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
[5] Endosymbiosis derives from the root words "symbiosis," meaning "mutually beneficial interaction between organisms" and "endo," meaning "from within."
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
[7] http://johncarlosbaez.wor
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
Computers: The Personal Computer
The personal computer (along with the Internet) is universally acknowledged to have ushered in a new era in human history: the information age.
It's hard to imagine now, but the idea of "a computer for ordinary people" was initially rejected.
Steve Wozniak was just building a computer for himself when he put together the archetype of the PC, the Apple I. [1] By fusing two concepts--symbol-input machines like typewrites and calculators with display-output machines like television screens--Wozniak incidentally stumbled upon a whole new technological paradigm.
When Wozniak invented it, he was working for Hewlett-Packard. Since he fancied himself an engineer with integrity and loyalty, he felt he had a duty to tell HP about this new machine he designed while working for them. He thought it the "right thing" to do. So in the spring of 1976, he took the Apple I to his managers at HP.
As the story goes, Wozniak's "personal computer" was harshly received by HP. The company simply didn't understand why any ordinary person would need a computer with that particular form and functionality. It was just a hobbyist product to them. HP was apparently so insistent on the uselessness of such a device that they rejected Wozniak five times! [2]
While HP seems bone-headed in retrospect, one must consider that there was no such thing as modern software applications enabling the myriad uses of PCs today. This is before word processors, spreadsheets, photo and video editors, web browsers, and so forth. Computer functionality was fairly limited back then and their applied use across wide swaths of the population was very difficult to predict. The Apple I, after all, looked like this:
Nevertheless, after Wozniak got the hint that HP wouldn't develop the concept, he agreed to form a company with Steve Jobs to sell them. The rest, as they say, is history!
See this short clip from Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999 movie) for a glimpse of the ridicule PCs initially received (starts at 1:01):
Evolutionary Biology: Endosymbiosis
In biology, Lynn Margulis argued passionately for the endosymbiotic theory, taking it from unaccepted hearsay to strong scientific consensus and approval.
For those not so familiar with the history of evolutionary biology, a short explanation is in order.
For the longest time, biologists believed that evolution only took place through vertical gene transfer (otherwise known as reproduction or procreation), where a parent would propagate their genes by producing offspring. [3]
Then, in the mid-20th century, it was postulated that there was another way to evolve: horizontal gene transfer (HGT). This mechanism would purportedly allow genes to propagate independently of reproduction. [4]
For decades, this theory was unrecognized because there was insufficient evidence for biologists to universally agree upon (and it just seemed implausible given all that was known about microbiology at the time).
Enter Lynn Margulis. She was certain of HGT as an evolutionary mechanism and believed one of its primary drivers was endosymbiosis [5]: the engulfing of one organism by another as a gamble on survival benefits, thereby horizontally transferring genetic material. [6]
The standard example is that some organelles (sub-cellular bodies within cells) don't share DNA from their cell's nucleus, but from DNA from other organisms that must have been swallowed by the 'master' organism.
Endosymbiosis had many important implications. For one, it helped explain Antibiotic Resistance. It also suggested that HGT could apply to the evolution of all organisms, leading to new theories on the giant "tree of life" and how it may be more of an interconnected matrix rather than a top-down hierarchy. [6]
As John Baez states in his obituary of Margulis,
As a young faculty member at Boston University, she wrote a paper on this theory. It was rejected by about fifteen scientific journals, but eventually accepted. [7]
From the 1970s onwards, new tools finally allowed scientists to compare genetic material within and between different cells, confirming that in certain species, DNA was inherited from sources outside the cells' nuclei. [8]
The evidence was slow to come at first, but eventually Margulis' argument won out. The discovery of HGT and endosymbiosis, contested as they were for decades, were landmark moments in our understanding of evolution.
Footnotes for the personal computer
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
[2] http://www.appleinsider.c
Footnotes for the endosymbiotic theory
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
[5] Endosymbiosis derives from the root words "symbiosis," meaning "mutually beneficial interaction between organisms" and "endo," meaning "from within."
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
[7] http://johncarlosbaez.wor
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/w
Prior to Pasteur's germ theory, Ignaz Semmelweis was ostracized and ended up being killed by a guard in an asylum. His crime — insisting the reason for the extremely high death rate in hospital maternity wards was caused by doctors who refused to wash their hands after studying cadavers in the hospital morgues.
From Wikipedia:
There's an interesting book filled with hundreds of examples of pompous experts who couldn't be more wrong, including Dr. Dionysus Ladner (Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London) who was absolutely positive that “Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation by Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky (Aug 4, 1998)
Little has changed. It's the 21st century and I'm offering a theory that explains every manmade problem and even why so many important ideas were initially ridiculed and rejected by experts, right up to the present. Today's experts are proving they're every bit as delusional about being more open minded than their foolish predecessors who also convinced one another they were more open minded than their foolish predecessors.
What is Charles Faraone's definitive post or answer in which he explains his ideas on dopamine flow?
From Wikipedia:
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (July 1, 1818 – August 13, 1865) was a Hungarian physician of German extraction now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Described as the "savior of mothers", Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal, with mortality at 10%–35%. Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards. He published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever.
Despite various publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings.
There's an interesting book filled with hundreds of examples of pompous experts who couldn't be more wrong, including Dr. Dionysus Ladner (Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London) who was absolutely positive that “Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation by Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky (Aug 4, 1998)
Little has changed. It's the 21st century and I'm offering a theory that explains every manmade problem and even why so many important ideas were initially ridiculed and rejected by experts, right up to the present. Today's experts are proving they're every bit as delusional about being more open minded than their foolish predecessors who also convinced one another they were more open minded than their foolish predecessors.
What is Charles Faraone's definitive post or answer in which he explains his ideas on dopamine flow?
The history is full of such cases:
Georg Cantor: Was a German mathematician, best known as the inventor of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics.
At the time of Cantor, mathematics was the search for certainties and clarities and Cantor dealt only with their irrational numbers and non-logical infinite, what seemed to be wandering far from certain, he soon face severe and implacable hostility. Other mathematicians of the era have always tried to avoid Cantor to publish their work.
Cantor always dreamed of receiving an invitation from one of the great universities of the time as Vienna or Berlin. But that invitation never came.
He was also personally attacked, the great mathematician Henry Poincare said that mathematics of Cantor was a disease, which mathematics will one day heal. Worse, his friend and former teacher Kronecker said Cantor was a corrupter of youth.
The personal and professional attacks on Cantor became increasingly extreme. In fact, he wrote a friend saying he did not know if could support the insults and really could not. In may of that year he had a massive nervous breakdown in which he was admitted to a hospice (Nevenklinik in Halle).
On January 6, 1918, the greatest mathematician of his century died alone in his room, with its great project unfinished.
Ludwig Boltzmann: Was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. He was one of the most important advocates for atomic theory.
As Cantor, Boltzmann's ideas were out of touch of his time. The physics of that time was still a physical certainty, of an ordered universe, given from above by rules defined by God. Boltzmann defined the world order was not imposed by God, but that appeared from below, from the inner turmoil of the atoms, a radical idea at the time.
As Cantor, Boltzmann's ideas were not recognized and accepted by physicists of the time. Boltzmann's genius was that he accepted the probability. He could begin to understand complex phenomena like fire, water and life. Things that traditional physics, physics of mechanics, would never understand. As their solutions depended on the probability and likely ended with the certainty, no one wanted to hear him.
In 1906, Boltzman was on holiday in Duino with his wife and daughter. Exhausted and demoralized by their ideas not yet accepted, he committed suicide and left no note.
Kurt Gödel: Was an Austrian/American logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when many, such as Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead and David Hilbert, were pioneering the use of logic and set theory to understand the foundations of mathematics. Gödel is best known for his two incompleteness theorems.
Godel had a nervous breakdown and ended up at the sanatorium, as Cantor.
While Godel (who was the man who proved that there was a limit to rational certainty) was in a sanatorium, in Germany of Hitler would be assured Certain.
Gregor Mendel: Was an Austrian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. Although the significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century, the independent rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of the modern science of genetics.
Henry Ford: When Ford tried to present his project of a motor to a group of industrialists "specialized and seasoned", none of them gave the slightest importance. Edison was presen and when you simply hit the eyes in the sketch, left all the others aside to get back all its attention to Ford. Only a genius can recognize another. For others, what Ford was not presented any knowledge, it was nothing, would have thrown in the trash.
Thus, the hard way that the scientific-technological knowledge does not evolve, but survives, shoulder on shoulder (by giants).
(Sorry for my bad english)
Georg Cantor: Was a German mathematician, best known as the inventor of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics.
At the time of Cantor, mathematics was the search for certainties and clarities and Cantor dealt only with their irrational numbers and non-logical infinite, what seemed to be wandering far from certain, he soon face severe and implacable hostility. Other mathematicians of the era have always tried to avoid Cantor to publish their work.
Cantor always dreamed of receiving an invitation from one of the great universities of the time as Vienna or Berlin. But that invitation never came.
He was also personally attacked, the great mathematician Henry Poincare said that mathematics of Cantor was a disease, which mathematics will one day heal. Worse, his friend and former teacher Kronecker said Cantor was a corrupter of youth.
The personal and professional attacks on Cantor became increasingly extreme. In fact, he wrote a friend saying he did not know if could support the insults and really could not. In may of that year he had a massive nervous breakdown in which he was admitted to a hospice (Nevenklinik in Halle).
On January 6, 1918, the greatest mathematician of his century died alone in his room, with its great project unfinished.
Ludwig Boltzmann: Was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. He was one of the most important advocates for atomic theory.
As Cantor, Boltzmann's ideas were out of touch of his time. The physics of that time was still a physical certainty, of an ordered universe, given from above by rules defined by God. Boltzmann defined the world order was not imposed by God, but that appeared from below, from the inner turmoil of the atoms, a radical idea at the time.
As Cantor, Boltzmann's ideas were not recognized and accepted by physicists of the time. Boltzmann's genius was that he accepted the probability. He could begin to understand complex phenomena like fire, water and life. Things that traditional physics, physics of mechanics, would never understand. As their solutions depended on the probability and likely ended with the certainty, no one wanted to hear him.
In 1906, Boltzman was on holiday in Duino with his wife and daughter. Exhausted and demoralized by their ideas not yet accepted, he committed suicide and left no note.
Kurt Gödel: Was an Austrian/American logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when many, such as Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead and David Hilbert, were pioneering the use of logic and set theory to understand the foundations of mathematics. Gödel is best known for his two incompleteness theorems.
Godel had a nervous breakdown and ended up at the sanatorium, as Cantor.
While Godel (who was the man who proved that there was a limit to rational certainty) was in a sanatorium, in Germany of Hitler would be assured Certain.
Gregor Mendel: Was an Austrian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. Although the significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century, the independent rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of the modern science of genetics.
Henry Ford: When Ford tried to present his project of a motor to a group of industrialists "specialized and seasoned", none of them gave the slightest importance. Edison was presen and when you simply hit the eyes in the sketch, left all the others aside to get back all its attention to Ford. Only a genius can recognize another. For others, what Ford was not presented any knowledge, it was nothing, would have thrown in the trash.
Thus, the hard way that the scientific-technological knowledge does not evolve, but survives, shoulder on shoulder (by giants).
(Sorry for my bad english)
An excellent current example is found in the career of Daniel Shechtman, recent winner of the nobel prize in chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals (http://www.wired.com/wir
He had made a discovery which fundamentally shifted our understanding/assumptions about crystallography, for which he was initially ridiculed, only to be vindicated:
"For a long time it was me against the world," he said. "I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. For years, 'til his last day, he fought against quasi-periodicity in crystals. He was wrong, and after a while, I enjoyed every moment of this scientific battle, knowing that he was wrong."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/w
He had made a discovery which fundamentally shifted our understanding/assumptions about crystallography, for which he was initially ridiculed, only to be vindicated:
"For a long time it was me against the world," he said. "I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. For years, 'til his last day, he fought against quasi-periodicity in crystals. He was wrong, and after a while, I enjoyed every moment of this scientific battle, knowing that he was wrong."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/w
