"They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions ... Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions."
This was a perfect depiction (intentional or not?) of flat-earthers. Who appeal to ancient civilizations that regarded the Earth as flat. Who quote the Book of Enoch as a reliable source.
While, on the other side:
Who breaks with the traditional idea of an Earth at the center of the universe? Copernicus.
Who breaks with the traditional idea of planets' orbits being necessarily circular? Kepler.
Who breaks with the traditional (Aristotelian) idea of bodies of different weight falling at different rates? Galileo.
Who introduces the totally non-traditional idea of action at a distance? Newton.
Who introduces the totally non-traditional idea of light being an undulation? Huygens.
Who breaks with the traditional theory of phlogiston? Lavoisier.
Who breaks with the traditional idea of animal species being fixed and immutable? Darwin.
Who breaks with the traditional idea of spontaneous generation of life? Pasteur.
Who breaks with the traditional idea of an absolute time? Einstein.
Who breaks with the traditional idea of geometry of space being necessarily Euclidean? Einstein, again (but already a century before the great mathematician Gauss had posed the question and had set out to measure the angles defined by three mountaintops, to see whether their sum was indeed 180°).
Who breaks with the traditional idea of a universe being static and basically unchanging with time? Hubble and Lemaître.
Not to mention quantum mechanics, where the traditional, natural and apparently self-evident idea that a particle, at any given time, has a definite position in space must be totally abandoned.
So now, WHO is desperately clinging to their traditions?
Indeed, that's why science is hated by so many. It disrupts traditional, comfortable ideas and beliefs. Like that nature is still an “out there”, stronger than us, against which we can manly fight without the fear of “toppling the boat” - that is, polluting the environment, destroying ecosystems, exhausting natural resources, altering the very climate of the planet. No more dreaming of ever bigger cars? No, it MUST be a conspiracy, like the Covid hoax, like the vaccine scam, like the 15-minutes cities, to keep us caged and controlled!
As so many times in history. Famines were caused by hoarders, plagues by “untori” (plague spreaders) or Jews, other natural calamities by some inconsiderate member of the community who had somehow offended the gods. It's always been highly comfortable to think that it's enough to get rid of the offender or to topple the conspiracy to get everything all right again.
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