However, in the 17th century when Francis Bacon (1561-1626) suggested that this type of thinking was the way to gain knowledge, he was going against the views of the day. Although Bacon held an important rank in King James’ royal court of England, his true interest was not the day-to-day, slow and inefficient working style of the government, but the worthy search for knowledge. This was certainly not the interest of most people in his days. At that time, people believed more in the church than in facts, and people like Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who proved the idea that “the Earth is not the centre of the universe”, were often punished by the church with no one coming to their defence. The church and many people tended to ignore the facts and didn’t want to challenge what they had always comfortably believed. In fact, when Galilei proved that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, instead of believing him, people chose to believe views that were almost 2, 000 years old!

It is not surprising that people wanted to believe these primitive ideas as they had been put forward by the great philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE). He said that the Earth must be the centre of the universe because it felt like the Earth was standing still. Galilei disagreed. At first, people approved of his studies and urged him to continue, but later when he proved Aristotle wrong, they grew angry and put him in prison. They didn’t want to abandon what they’d always thought as true. And this is still often true today. People make the assumption that if someone important and respected says that something is right, then it must be so. But even though Aristotle was a great man who inspired many great scientists and philosophers after him, he was wrong at times. And Galilei also made mistakes. He is now known as the father of astronomy but he believed that the Earth moved round the sun in a perfect circle. He was wrong.