The Caveman's Shadow

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.

This essay also appeared in my science blog. For this blog, I add that the once humans began to think about the sun and the Earth, they began making claims that the sun was a god and that the Earth did not move. They made this claim even though it made no sense. If the sun was a god, why did this god always move along the same track, shifting its position in exactly the same way every year? What kind of a god would do this, without getting bored, year after year? But religious beliefs gave despotic leaders power over the minds of other people. When caveman society gave way to the first village life, it was not much of an improvement in how people viewed the world.