Article May 5, 2008 Issue

THE SCIENCE OF SEEING THE REAL YOU

BY SARAH G. HYATT

THE EARTH IS FLAT , and the sun moves around it. The "four humors" control human health and well-being. Time and space are fixed facts.

It's so easy to laugh now at what were once firmly entrenched ideas. But great thinkers such as Pythagoras, Galileo, Copernicus, and Einstein had to be willing to challenge the accepted theories of their time, and they moved thought forward in understanding the world.

Have you ever wondered about the concepts that are generally held as true now—which of them will be found by future ages to be totally without merit? Could one of them possibly be the idea that the five physical senses tell the truth about reality?