My favorite passage in the book connects perception, the history of science and the universe that is the Model behind Dante's Divine Comedy. Schulz shows how thoroughly wrong we can be when all of our senses tell us we are right.
"Step outside...in someplace truly dark: the Himalayas, say, or Patagonia, or the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If you look up in such a place, you will observe the sky above you is vast and vaulted, its darkness pulled taut from horizon to horizon and perforated by innumerable stars. Stand there long enough and you'll see this whole vault turning overhead, like the slowest of the tumblers in the most mysterious of locks. Stand there even longer and it will dawn on you that your own position in the spectacle is curiously central. The apex of the heavens is directly above you. And the land you are standing on--land that unlike the firmament is quite flat, and unlike the stars is quite stationary--stretches out in all directions from a midpoint that is you.
"It is, of course, an illusion: almost everything we see and feel out there on our imaginary Patagonia porch is misleading. The sky is neither vaulted nor revolving around us, the land is neither flat nor stationary, and, sad to say, we ourselves are not the center of the cosmos. Not only are these things wrong, they are canonically wrong. They are to the intellect what the Titanic is to the ego: a permanent puncture wound, a reminder of the sheer scope at which we can err. What is strange, and not a little disconcerting, is that we can commit such fundamental mistakes by simply stepping outside and looking up."
Schulz surveys the history of being wrong quoting many of the great thinkers of history from Augustine to Groucho Marx, so everyone who has ever been wrong should find something to connect with in this delightful book.
