Testing vision instead of theorising it
From the Middle East and North Africa·An enduring case
Ibn al-Haytham's eleventh-century optics rejected the reigning theory that eyes emit rays, arguing from designed experiments with dark chambers and controlled light. He wrote that the seeker of truth must suspect every text, including his own. The method was the message.
The concepts this raises
Each of these gives a class a different way into the same case.
- EvidenceGrounds of Knowledge
- What is offered in support of a claim. Evidence is not the same as proof: it raises or lowers how likely a claim is, and its force depends on how it was gathered, what it was gathered for, and what else it is consistent with. Asking what would count as evidence against a claim is usually more revealing than listing evidence for it.
- JustificationGrounds of Knowledge
- The reasoning that connects evidence to a conclusion. Two knowers can hold the same evidence and be justified in different beliefs if their inferential standards differ. Justification is what separates knowing something from happening to be right about it.
Where it sits in the knowledge framework
- Methods and tools
- The practices, conventions, instruments and forms of reasoning through which knowledge here is actually made, together with the assumptions those methods build in and what they are structurally unable to detect.
Areas of knowledge
The same ideas, somewhere else
Cases that raise a concept this one raises, but in a different area of knowledge or a different part of the world. That contrast is the point: it is what shows a student the concept travels.
- East Asia
Grams of asteroid, years of travel
Japan's Hayabusa2 spent years travelling to asteroid Ryugu to bring back a few grams of material, though telescopes and spectra had already characterised it…
Enduring · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Justification
- Oceania
The raft, the genes, and Pacific origins
Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki voyage showed a raft could drift from South America into Polynesia, and the spectacle carried his settlement theory for decades.…
Enduring · History · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Justification
- Africa
When a government doubted the virus
South Africa's government under Mbeki gave platform to AIDS-dissident scientists and delayed antiretroviral rollout, and later epidemiological studies…
Enduring · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Power
- Responsibility
- Southeast Asia
The city the lasers found under the jungle
Airborne laser scanning over Angkor stripped away the canopy digitally and revealed a vast low-density urban sprawl around the temples, overturning estimates…
Enduring · History
- Evidence
- Interpretation
- India
Ayurveda meets the randomised trial
India funds research ministries for both biomedicine and traditional systems like Ayurveda, and disputes recur over whether centuries of documented clinical…
Current · The human sciences · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Culture
- Southeast Asia
The divers evolution equipped
The Bajau of Southeast Asia free-dive to remarkable depths, and genetic studies found enlarged spleens consistent with selection for diving over generations.…
Enduring · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Culture