I was intrigued when Professor Fleming told the class that the one of our readings would come from a book written by a Yale Professor titled, The Origin of Everything in 100 Pages (more or less). After hearing how complicated the origin of the universe was by our previous visiting professor, I was excited to hear this shorter rendition of the “origin of everything”.

Last week, I wrote about how scientific “truths” are still up for debate and still really do not represent the whole truth, because some things can not truly be recreated to be proven, are abstract, still have holes in their explanations and more. After thinking more and more about this issue I decided to ask our visiting Professor. I asked how he understand and qualifies things that we accept as truths, and how those came to be. I was surprised with his answer, however understood and shared his opinion. He continued to say that the theories that we have in place now are just theories and will stay theories. A theory is defined as “a well-sustained explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not guesses, but reliable accounts of the real world”. But, just because they are based on proven facts, the theory can still be proved false later on.

I thought it was also particularly interesting to listen to him talk about the ways in which he tries to make sure that what he was publishing was as true as possible. I think that in today’s society, people are quick to accept truths for any person of authority, and there is a lack of questioning that comes from the public on certain issues, the origin of scientifically created things to be one of them. Professor Bercovici talked about how he had his collegues edit his book and tried to make sure that the things he was particularly unfamiliar with were reviewed. However, he was clear that peer review does not mean that everything was correct or true, but having it peer reviewed was better than nothing. I was disappointed to hear that certain other books or published works of scientists are not put through a series of peer reviews, but rather just published. I think that this is problematic because the public accepts almost anything that is published to be true as their is a sense of trust from a reader when reading things like these.

Talking about how some things that are widely accepted are not necessarily true reminded me of things going on in politics today. Trump and other politicians have publicly said things that have been proved to be false, yet due to their authority and public status, many have come to accept these things as true. I believe that people should be more wary of the “facts” they read and hear and question theories to get a more thorough understanding of what is being read, like Professor Bercovici alluded to.