What are some important things that scientists discovered that people opposed in the beginning?

Answer 1

Here are a few my Great Grandmother told me when I was young, Television, telephones, Automobiles, later it was computers and ATM's. Some others I learned were putting a man on the moon, organ transplants, and life support machines.

Answer 2

1. definitely the idea that the earth goes around the sun instead of the sun going around the earth. Read up on Galileo for that one.
2. the "germ theory" of disease. That microscopic organisms could make us sick. Read up on Louis Pasteur for that.
3. the modern understanding of heat. For a long time people thought heat had to do with something called "phlogiston." The phlogiston guys fought tooth and nail for a long time before they gave up on that idea. Look up Rumford and Lavoisier.
4. "Spontaneous generation" the idea that living things could arise out of dirt. I have seen some questions here on Yahoo that show that some people still havent gotten the message that this was proved wrong! That was Louis Pasteur, too.
5. The Elements - the idea that elements could not be converted from one to another -- for more than 1000 years people tried to find a way to convert lead to gold.
6. Evolution - accepted all over the world by the overwhelming majority of scientists for most of the last century, but there are still people who dont get it. Look up Darwin or Huxley or any modern textbook of biology,
7. Ozone depletion - a lot of people had to practically be hit over the head back in the 1970s before they would admit this was true. Fortunately they world got smart before it was too late.
7. Global Warming - scientists around the world have accepted this, but there are still people who don;t accept it for political or religious reasons.

Some other things that people really didnt believe could happen or be done until they got hit on the head -- airplanes, Einstein's E =mc2, the Ice ages, fossils, vitamins (like vitamin C to stop the disease scurvy), poisonings caused by toxins in the environment (like mercury - Minimata disease), damage from pesticides like DDT, steam engines, the telephone, TV, personal computers...

Answer 3

Classic examples are Copernicus and Galileo. They championed heliocentrism (that the sun, rather than the earth, is at the center of the solar system), a view that was condemned by the Church. Galileo also supported several other breaks from Aristotelian tradition that were not originally accepted.

Then, of course, there's always evolution, which people to this day insist on denying...

Answer 4

One major thing during the Renaissance was the notion that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than everything revolving around the Earth. :)

Answer 5

The notion that invisible things called germs exist.

Answer 6

Earth was round.
The solar system.
Sterilizing for operations.
Relativity theory.

Answer 7

Evolution of life.

Answer 8

The earth is flat, bucko!
People=the church