There are facts that don’t change, like the height of Mount Everest, and facts that change a lot, like the weather. Then there are mesofacts, facts that are neither fast nor momentus, and so don’t receive the same scrutiny, but are still worthy of your attention. For example, the Periodic table has added 12 elements since 1970. 400 new extrasolar planets have been discovered since the first one in 1995. The world’s population stands at 6.8 million. Many dinosaurs were swift and warm-blooded. “Updating your mesofacts,” says Samuel Arbesman, “can change how you think about the world.” (And, I’m always drawn to insights that change how I think about the world):
Do you know the percentage of people in the world who use mobile phones? In 1997, the answer was 4 percent. By 2007, it was nearly 50 percent. The fraction of people who are mobile phone users is the kind of fact you might read in a magazine and quote at a cocktail party. But years later the number you would be quoting would not just be inaccurate, it would be seriously wrong. The difference between a tiny fraction of the world and half the globe is startling, and completely changes our view on global interconnectivity.
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“Facts are what people think.” Your Alan Boyd quotation strikes at the heart of things: there’s a scientific definition of fact as an objective, verifiable truth that most of us ascribe to, and then there’s Boyd’s pragmatic definition that places as much value on beliefs and “common sense” that most of us use to get through the day. (This isn’t to say that the people in the past were wrong; this is to say that people in the present are :-) )
Alan Boyd, onetime president of Amtrak, said once, “Facts are what people think.” That goes with the theme of the post.
We like to think of “fact” as something everyone would agree on: Paris is the capital of France. Carbon is a solid.
And most of the time, we have to think that way. On a practical basis, there’s no point in considering that all the atoms in my desk are busily whirling around. Thus the rule of thumb, “If you hear hoofbeats, think ‘horses,’ not ‘zebras.’”
Sometimes, though, it’s zebras. Or bison. Two more relevant examples (since I don’t often hear any kind of hooves):
Until the mid80s, science “knew” that bacteria couldn’t live in the human stomach, as so ulcers were caused by things like stress. Now we know that most are caused by h. pylori.. a bacterium that lives in the stomach.
We used to “know” that the number of brain cells was fixed at birth. It was use-it-or-lose-in in a very real sense. Now we understand plasticity, neurogenesis, and other factors.
This isn’t to say that people in the past were wrong; it’s more as a reminder for ourselves that when we’re right, we’re not necessarily right for all time.