Objection · Case 05 · Relativism
Snow’s work didn’t overthrow miasma theory in 1854. The authorities rejected his conclusion and reinstalled the pump handle. The correction took decades.
One objection from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Response
True, and the story is often told as a cleaner victory than it was. The correction was slow and resisted, and that detail helps the point rather than hurting it. The truth about cholera did not depend on whether the Board of Health believed it, and reality eventually forced the change. Slow, resisted correction is what the discovery of a mind-independent fact looks like.
About this exhibit
This objection is to John Snow and the Broad Street pump, London, 1854.
During a cholera outbreak in London, the physician John Snow mapped the cases and traced them to a single contaminated water pump on Broad Street, showing the disease spread through water rather…
Under Claim 03: Confident, mainstream scientific consensus has been badly wrong and then corrected by evidence.