Even the Wisest Can Err
So far, we’ve established that people can be mistaken in what they perceive and remember and that the information they receive can be faulty or incomplete. But these matters concern individuals. What of group judgment—the carefully analyzed observations of the best thinkers, the wisest men and women of the time? Is that record better? Happily, it is.
But it, too, leaves a lot to be desired.
All too often, what is taken as truth one day by the most respected minds is proved erroneous the next. You undoubtedly know of some examples. In the early seventeenth century, when Galileo suggested that the sun is the center of our solar system, he was charged with heresy, imprisoned, and pressured to renounce his error. The “truth” of that time, accepted by every scientist worthy of the name, was that the earth was the center of the solar system.
Here are some other examples you may not have heard about in which the “truth” turned out not to be true:
• For a long time surgeons used talc on the rubber gloves they wore while performing surgery. Then they discovered it could be poison-ous. So they switched to starch, only to find that it, too, could have a toxic effect on surgical patients.5
• Film authorities were certain they were familiar with all the films the late Charlie Chaplin ever made. Then, in 1982, a previously unknown film was discovered in a British screen archive vault.6
• For hundreds of years historians believed that although the people of Pompeii had been trapped by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, the people of neighboring Herculaneum had escaped. Then the discovery of eighty bodies (and the hint of hundreds more) under the volcanic ash revealed that many from Herculaneum had also been trapped.7
• Your grandparents probably learned that there are eight planets in our solar system. Since Pluto was discovered in 1930, your parents and you learned there are nine. Then Joseph L. Brady of the University of California suggested there might be ten . 8 But more recently Pluto was removed from the list.
• After morphine was used by doctors for some years as a painkiller, it was found to be addictive. The search began for a nonaddictive substitute. What was found to take its place? Heroin!9
- For a remarkably clear discussion of this complex subject, see Mortimer J. Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter (New York: Macmillan, 1990).
- William Barrett, Death of the Soul from Descartes to the Computer (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986), pp. 10, 53, 75.
- John Dewey, How We Think (New York: Heath, 1933), p. 4.
- Dewey, How We Think, pp. 88–90.
- R. W. Gerard, “The Biological Basis of Imagination,” Scientific Monthly, June 1946, p. 477.
甚至最聪明的人也会犯错
到目前为止，我们已经确定，人们的感知和记忆可能会出错，他们接收到的信息可能是错误的或不完整的。但这些问题只关系到个人。那么群体判断呢——对当时最优秀的思想家、最聪明的男女的观察进行仔细分析后得出的结论呢?这样的记录更好吗?幸运的是,这个结论是肯定的。
但它也有许多不足之处。
通常情况下，今天被最受尊敬的人视为真理的东西，第二天就被证明是错误的。你肯定知道一些例子。17世纪早期，当伽利略提出太阳是太阳系的中心时，他被指控为异端，遭到监禁，并被迫放弃他的错误。当时的“真理”，被每一个名副其实的科学家所接受，就是地球是太阳系的中心。
下面是一些你可能没听说过的“真理”被证明不正确的例子:
•长期以来，外科医生在做手术时戴的橡胶手套上使用滑石粉，然后他们发现它可能是有毒的。所以他们改用淀粉，结果发现它对外科病人也有毒性作用。（5）
•电影权威人士确信，他们对已故查理•卓别林(Charlie Chaplin)的所有电影都很熟悉。然后，在1982年，一部以前不为人知的电影在英国银幕档案库里被发现。（6）
•数百年来，历史学家一直认为，尽管庞贝人在公元79年的维苏威火山(Mount Vesuvius)爆发中被困，但邻近的赫库兰尼姆(Herculaneum)人却逃脱了。随后，在火山灰下发现了80具尸体(还有数百具)，这表明赫库兰尼姆的许多尸体也被困。（7）
•你的祖父母可能知道我们的太阳系有八颗行星。自从1930年冥王星被发现以来，你和你的父母就知道冥王星有九个。然后，加州大学的约瑟夫·l·布雷迪(Joseph L. Brady)提出，可能会有10个。（8）但是最近冥王星被从名单上除名了。
•医生使用吗啡作为止痛药多年后，发现它会上瘾。研究开始寻找一种不会上瘾的替代品。找到了什么来代替它?海洛因! （9）
5.有关这一复杂问题的非常清晰的讨论，见莫蒂默·j·阿德勒，《智力:精神高于物质》(纽约:麦克米伦出版社，1990年)。
6.威廉·巴雷特，《从笛卡尔到计算机的灵魂之死》(花园城，纽约):《双日》(Doubleday, 1986)，第10、53、75页。
7.约翰·杜威，《我们如何思考》(纽约:希思出版社，1933年)，第4页。
8.杜威，《我们如何思考》，第88-90页。
9.“想像的生物学基础”，《科学月刊》，一九四六年六月，页477。
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