New Poll Gauges Americans’ General Knowledge Levels:
Also in the “ideas have consequences” category, White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire.
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Meta
Actually they mutually revolve around a common center of gravity; otoh there is no privileged observer of motion, so I’d give credit to either answer.
Perhaps I’m being slow, but what am I supposed to be seeing on the graph? That the number of people who think the Sun goes ’round the earth is about the same as the number of people below one standard deviation of IQ? Or is this just a more generic ‘these people are stupid’ thing?
I prefer to think that stupid people misinterpret the question (they might get ‘revolve’ backwards, for example) rather than that stupid people don’t know the answer to that question. But I’m an optimist.
Or is this just a more generic ‘these people are stupid’ thing?
Yes.
I prefer to think that stupid people misinterpret the question (they might get ‘revolve’ backwards, for example) rather than that stupid people don’t know the answer to that question.
Yes, I think people are confused. That being said, the high error rate here indicates quickly that most people don’t really have a ‘mental model’ of the solar system off the top of their head, and have a hard time recollecting something that was last explained to them in grade school. The idea that the earth revolves around the Sun goes against ‘folk physics,’ so you have to have ‘book learnin” overrule this reflex. The ‘trip up’ shows how little ‘book learnin” most people internalize.
I would wager there would be a continuum re abstractness of notion internaliuzed somewhat along the lines of the graph
Actually this is an extremeley subtle question. Go lookup the Ernst Mach explanation of momentum conservation & Prof. E’s General Theory of relativity. The really smart people were the 3% who reserved judgement 🙂
I prefer other opinions offered in Gallup’s survey:
Question: America’s independence was won from who?
85% of men compared to only 69% of women knew the answer
-a great one for Christmas parties to irritate your female friends.
80% of whites vs. 54% of blacks answered correctly
-Gallup must be a bunch of closet racists to impolitely mention this statistic.
Do members of the “Secular Right” go to Christmas parties?
@vic For all practical everyday purposes, the sun moves across the sky. If you deny this, you are contradicting the evidence of your senses.
Id you think the Earth is an oblate spheriod, again you are dening the evidence of your senses. For all practical everyday purposes we can sfely think of the Earth as being flat.
Of course, for specialised purposes, such as time keeping or navigation, it is more useful to deny the direct evidence of our own eyes and rely on that of others and of various mathematical computations that serve our specific purpose at the moment.
I believe that most people are rational and, in fact, trust the evidence of their eyes. Despite this, many will answer question about the shape of the Earth and the motions of the Sun because our culture determines that in this time (21c) and place (within the ambit of Western civilisation) the “correct” (o.e. socially acceptable) answers to give are those that are contrary to the evidence of our eyes.
I hope that no one would claim that there are ‘objectively true’ answers to such questions.
@Spinoza
You’re correct, but it’s important to note for everyone who’s not as savvy on the physics that the common center of mass is affected by everything in the solar system (and outside as well). In a two-mass problem, the larger mass should shift around the center of mass at the opposite point to the smaller, but in a kazillion-mass problem the largest mass is shifted about in (nearly) unpredictable ways. Furthermore, I gather (and don’t quote me ‘less you’re a bettin’ man) that the solar system’s center of mass is located inside that big yellow ball (though almost never in the middle). Thus I think it is fair to say that the Earth revolves around the sun … it just doesn’t revolve around the middle of the sun.
I always doubt these polls. But, then, I’m a skeptic.
Not sure what this is supposed to show. 21% of Americans will have an IQ below 88 or so; therefore it’s not surprising that this percentage would fail a general knowledge test. Since other countries have similar numbers, this seems to confirm this is a general characteristic of large populations.
I’m not sure pessimism is necessary in this case.
This brings to mind Eric Idle’s “Galaxy Sing”, particularly the final line. “And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ’cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYg_oSEV-XM
My understanding is that from the pov of a hypothetical observer located at Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole located at or near the center of mass of the Galaxy, both the Earth and the Sun orbit the center of the Galaxy.
Even though their orbital trajectories (actually geodesics in curved spacetime) inter-twine; they everywhere curve towards Sgr A*.
This is because Earth’s orbital-velocity relative to the Sun (29.8 km/s) is much less than the Solar System’s orbital-velocity relative to Sgr A* (Over 200 km/s).
Consequently the Earth’s trajectory never loops or appears retrograde from Sgr A*. Instead, it traces out a very-stretched-out helix around the more-nearly-circular, orbital trajectory followed by the Solar System’s center of mass.
@joe
It would have been nice to see a a racial breakdown for all the questions instead of just that one …
Also, that ‘new poll’ apparently was done in 1999.
Also, that ‘new poll’ apparently was done in 1999.
James Miller’s work shows that this is a consistent finding over time and cross-culturally.
Judging by that 3%, I guess Sherlock Holmes’ heirs are still with us.
No, I retract part of that:
(they everywhere curve towards Sgr A*).
I’ve just checked the math using a rough order of magnitude estimate.
For the Earth, the acceleration towards the Sun will be greater than the acceleration towards Sgr A*. This is because the radius of the Galactic orbit is so huge (26,000 ly), that the centripetal acceleration (~v²/R) toward Sgr A* is negligeable compared to the acceleration induced by the much closer Sun – even after allowing for the higher galactic orbital velocity.
The Earth’s orbit around the galactic center is a very-stretched-out helix. Its motion is never retrograde. But the curvature(acceleration) of the Earth’s trajectory towards the Sun is always greater than the curvature(acceleration) towards Sgr A*.
I apologise for these arguments I often seem to have with myself. 😉
What’s really annoying are the clever commenters who are trying to be even “smarter” than contemplated by the Gallup questioner.
I think we can say, objectively, that, as between the sun and earth, it is earth that is doing the revolving.
What’s really annoying are the clever commenters who are trying to be even “smarter” than contemplated by the Gallup questioner.
Inevitable with any thread on ‘scientific literacy.’
Because all motion is relative, you always have to define motion relative to something else. So I would prefer you said,
“as between the sun, and earth, and the background stars; it is earth that is doing the revolving.”
i.e. There are ways you can objectively test and verify this.
If there were no detectable background stars, there would be no way of knowing.
Sometimes I envy the 3% who could answer “no opinion” to such a question. My greatest treasure is my rational mind. My greatest curse is that it won’t shut up. Even when I try to stop using it, it instantly goes off and happily plays on its own; and incessantly pesters me with ideas I didn’t need. Dare I name it Daniel? ◄Dave►
I believe it was Sherlock Holmes who said that he did not know whether the Earth went around the sun or visa-versa, and that he considered such knowledge to be completely irrelevant to his line of work (investigating crimes) and him being able to live the life he wanted to live.
A minimal level of basic knowledge about the world around us is certainly good. However, there is something to be said about Holmes’ attitude.
kurt9
It might be that Holmes was correct and, then again, he might very well not be. What is irrefutably true is that he could not have complete foreknowledge as to the significance to his purposes of any particular piece of knowledge; a judgment of relevance, perhaps, but no clear-cut between two differing infinities.
All men (and especially the common man whose prepossessions in the form of voting behavior determine political leadership) are in the same position: mountains of stuff of potential importance to well-being and so little time or attention-span. Overall, it’s seemed to have worked out not too badly, what with almost constantly increasing population and
material productivity. In that respect, men (in general) have considered the most characteristically human science, i.e., economics, to be unimportant, personally, to most; Keynes knew his customers when he called it the “dismal science.” Governments since ancient times focus on the staving-off of economic inevitability, never so assiduously (or hopelessly failure-bound) as in the very present.