Infectious Ideas

Infectious Ideas

“What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.”

Dom Cobb – Inception

I am a little behind the times.  I saw the movie, Inception, this weekend.  Besides being a brilliant story, the above quote struck me as extremely compelling, particularly in regard to some of the thinkers from the Renaissance and Reformation eras.  These men were infected with ideas that changed their lives (and ultimately ours).  One early thinker, Galileo, specifically, changed the universe we live in (at least figuratively).  Galileo once said “UI do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”  Those contagious ideas.

What would possess a religious man (Galileo at one time wanted to be a monk) to denounce the church’s teachings?  Those pesky ideas again.  Initially, Galileo wanted to prove that objects fell at the same rate regardless of their weight.  He noticed that hail hit the ground at the same time regardless of its size (another of those parasitic ideas).  Aristotelian’s believed that the heavier hail just started higher up in the clouds so that was why they appeared to hit the ground at the same time.

After improving on the existing telescope, Galileo’s brain was infected by the preposterousness of Aristotle’s claims that the earth was the center of the universe and that everything in the universe was perfectly spherical and rotated around the earth in perfect circles.  Galileo saw mountains and craters on the moon, he saw spots on the sun, he saw changes in Venus that indicated to him that Venus rotated around the sun.  More parasitic ideas.

It is hard to imagine not living in a world that KNOWS that the earth revolves around the sun!  But this was almost literally an earth shattering idea for people of Galileo’s time.  People did not want to be infected by this idea.  Their previous notions of world order had already contaminated and taken hold of their brains and minds.  Fortunately, Galileo persisted in this propagation of ideas.  I want to be open to new ideas, but be able to separate the truth from nonsense.  I do not want to be stuck in a world where the sun revolves around the earth—but only in my head.

The following is a link to an Indigo Girls (Amy and Emily) song that gives tribute to Galileo.  The main theme of the song is about reincarnation and righting past lives wrongs which is more Platonic that Galileo-ian, but it is a good song anyway.

Galileo – Indigo Girls

I certainly find it to be true that once ideas get stuck in the “craw” of your brain, it is hard to eradicate them.  Who hasn’t had trouble falling to sleep because their brain will not turn off?  Some idea keeps bouncing off the walls of your mind.  I know that since I started contemplating writing on Galileo for the blog, I could not get the Indigo Girls song out of my head (which I haven’t heard for years)! Then I found a book on Galileo at the dollar store.  Some of this, I think, is our subconscious searching out “confirmation” for our ideas.  But Galileo was so possessed with his ideas and so wanted other people to hear and see his ideas that he got in trouble for them.