"What
all this boils down to is that science has never given up on the
Whiggish view of history that historians have long since abandoned: a
triumphant voyage out of the dark ages of ignorance and superstition
into the light of reason. In this view, all we really care about in
historical scientists is which of their ideas survived, not how they
thought and why. All the stuff that was of its time — Kepler’s cosmic
harmonies, Newton’s alchemy and eschatology, Faraday’s religiosity —
must then become a curious aberration: ‘Isn’t it strange that such great
minds held such weird ideas?’ It isn’t strange at all if you truly care
about history."
excerpt from the article Science fictions by Philip Ball.
