Comment by treyd
6 days ago
It's possible for the majority opinion to be wrong and contradict hard facts that are grounded in reality. For a couple thousand of years the opinion was that the universe was composed of 4-5 elements (earth, water, air, fire, and maybe ether).
During those thousands of years was there information showing the majority was incorrect?
Yes, they could see chemical reactions happening around them all the time, they just didn't understand what what they were looking at.
If you believe something and there's no evidence to the contrary that's understandable. The majority were wrong but they had no reason to think otherwise. They also lacked the formal science, like the scientific method (widespread) to properly investigate.
A person from the 1200s is not stupid for believing everything was made from four elements but a person from 2025 would be.