This morning one of our callers went on about how religion should be outlawed, since religion is the cause of most wars. While he was talking, I was busy trying to find Internet evidence of an article I remember reading that argued against that common belief. I couldn't find the article, so I didn't mention it. I still haven't been able to find the article, but it claimed that most wars were about territorial disputes and consolidation of power, not about religion.
That got me to thinking about conventional wisdom. The definition of conventional wisdom is, "The body of ideas or explanations generally accepted as true by the public or by experts in a field. Such ideas or explanations, though widely held, are unexamined. Unqualified societal discourse preserves the status quo." What does that mean? It means that conventional wisdom is made up of things we've heard about and talked about forever that really don't have any proof to back them up. Conventional wisdom, therefore, is not always true. Here are some examples:
My ninth-grade English teacher told me that during the time of Shakespeare, most people died in their thirties. That's not exactly right. During the middle ages, the average lifespan was about 30 years, but that counts an awful lot of babies who didn't live to celebrate their first birthdays. Because of a lack of medical advances, infant mortality was very high during the middle ages. Lots of people died during infancy, but lots of people also lived into their sixties and seventies.
It's a common belief that the fundraising efforts of Christopher Columbus for his first transatlantic voyage were hampered by the fact that most people believed the earth was flat. Not so. By the latter half of the 15th century, most people believed the earth was round. The problem with Columbus was that he believed the earth was only one-sixth of its actual size. In fact, if the western hemisphere didn't exist, Columbus would have run out of supplies long before he reached Asia.
I was told in school that Marco Polo brought back spaghetti from China and introduced it to Italy. That's not true, either. Pasta was brought to Italy by Libyan sailors about 600 years before Marco Polo was born.
The Thanksgiving celebrated by the pilgrims at Plymouth Colony in 1621 was not the first Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving had previously been celebrated on this continent at Saint Augustine, Florida in 1565, at the Frobisher Bay settlement in 1578, in French Canada in 1604, in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 and at the Berkeley Hundred settlement in 1619.
Napoleon was not particularly short for his time. He was five-foot-seven at a time when the average Frenchman was about five-foot-five.
Lincoln didn't free the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The proclamation made slavery illegal only in states that had withdrawn from the Union, and those states weren't following newly-passed American laws in 1863. They were fighting the Civil War. After the proclamation, it was still legal to own slaves in Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, which were all Union states. Slavery was finally outlawed for the entire nation in 1865.
The Coca-Cola company didn't have anything to do with inventing the popular image of Santa Claus. Coke didn't start using Santa in ads until the 1930s, and by then his image had been used for decades in lots of other advertising campaigns.
Do you believe a person has to be missing for 24 hours before a missing person report is filed? That's been presented as a fact in movies, but it's not. In cases where foul play is suspected, police start looking for someone immediately, regardless of how long they've been missing.
Entrapment law in the United States does not require undercover police officers to identify themselves as such upon request. The law applies to situations in which police encourage someone to violate a law they would have otherwise not violated.
The Japanese word "sushi" does not mean raw fish. It means "sour rice". Sushi consists of fish and other assorted goodies wrapped in sour rice. The fish might be raw, or it might be cooked. Fish served raw without rice is called "sashimi".
Metal in a microwave oven does not mess up the oven's electronic system. It can cause electrical arching. It can also heat up to the point that it damages the food being cooked. But there are such things as metal objects designed for use in the microwave, such as browning sleeves and pizza platforms.
Twinkies aren't around for purchase right now, but when they were, it was often said that they had an infinite shelf life and that they would survive a nuclear attack. Neither is true. In a nuclear explosion, Twinkies will burn as fast as anything else, and their actual shelf life is about 25 days. Most Twinkies went from factory to consumption in seven to ten days.
During the middle and old English periods, people did not really pronounce the word "the" as "ye". At that time, a symbol known as a "thorn" was used in writing in place of "the", and the thorn symbol looked a bit like the letter "y" with a tiny letter "e" above it. But it was still pronounced as "the".
I was told in school that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made object visible from space. According to astronaut Jay Apt, nothing man-made is visible from space, and the Great Wall can't be seen even as a line segment from about 180 miles up. On the other hand, the light produced by light bulbs can be seen from space.
Lemmings do not commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs. Lemmings do migrate in large numbers, however, and when they venture into unknown territory, they've been known to fall off of high surfaces. This is not because they're suicidal. It's because they're stupid.
If you pick up a baby bird, then return it to its nest, its mother will still care for it. The mother bird will not detect your scent on its offspring. Birds have a lousy sense of smell.
Ostriches do not hide their heads in the sand. They will, on occasion, be seen with their heads stuck into a bush or down a hole in the ground, but that's because they're looking for something to eat.
The memory span of a goldfish is not three seconds. In tests, goldfish have retained training for months.
Waking sleepwalkers is not harmful. A sleepwalker may be disoriented for a few seconds after waking up, but that's common for any sleeper. The main danger to a sleepwalker is the possibility of tripping over unseen objects.
And the lifespan of a housefly is not 24 hours. It's actually closer to a month.
So there are some examples of conventional wisdom that doesn't pass close scrutiny. But it's not a complete list. There are thousands of them. So if you every have the sinking feeling that everything you know is wrong, cheer up. You might at least be right about that.
