HOW TIME TURNS BLACK INTO WHITE, AND WHITE INTO BLACK.

How would the society today treat a person deliberately not washing hands and touching things (like his patients, for example)? In the year 1850, enlightened Europe, the exact reverse was true: bacteria and viruses were there, as for eons before, but a germ theory of infectious disease did not exist in social acceptance. It might have existed only in some rare minds. So you were treated not-very-well for washing hands (if you were a doctor especially) because of some reason (the human mind can invent a reason for absolutely anything). In 1850, a hand washing suggestion was, apparently, universally offensive. Dr Ignaz Semmelweis did not end up well, because all the evidence on Earth cannot convince those who do not believe in it already. Belief comes first, and evidence is used selectively to support and rationalize what one already believes. (It seems, according to psychological research, that justice may be dispensed in the same way, without realizing this, of course).


100 years later, Alan Turing was effectively killed: the want to have a genius' results without genius' eccentricities. Einstein was more savvy with public opinion management, and that's how he "won" over Henri Bergson (and why we know about him but not about the other).


But, today, today we must have everything right and figured out.


"Much of what took place would have been deemed crazy with respect to the past. [..] He who sees the past as surprise-free is bound to have a future full of surprises." -Amos Tversky