This is a brief meditation upon how science has
changed everything we see.
If a caveman stood straight up (which he could;
the old movies showing cavemen dragging their knuckles are ridiculous) at
midday, he would see his shadow just like every other sunny day. He would not
have realized that his shadow pointed straight north.
If he had done so on the first day of spring or
fall (assuming he knew about what day this was), he would most certainly not
have realized that the length of his shadow would be exactly the same as his
height if he was at 45 degrees north or south. Or that the reason for this was
that the Earth revolved around the sun and was tilted relative to the plane of
its revolution. He would just see his shadow. But today we can look at our
shadow and see a whole story about the movement of the Earth.
In this and many other ways, the scientific
viewpoint changes everything we see.
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