That Which You Think You Know, Maybe Not So Much

h/t Kottke; 

"When people think of knowledge, they generally think of two sorts of facts: facts that don’t change, like the height of Mount Everest or the capital of the United States, and facts that fluctuate constantly, like the temperature or the stock market close.

"But in between there is a third kind: facts that change slowly. These are facts which we tend to view as fixed, but which shift over the course of a lifetime. For example: What is Earth’s population? I remember learning 6 billion, and some of you might even have learned 5 billion. Well, it turns out it’s about 6.8 billion."  

An article by Samuel Arbesman in the Boston Globe.

Sam Arbesman has turned his mesofacts concept into an upcoming book called The Half-Life of Facts.

The periodic table has many more elements on it than when last I took chemistry in high school, there are many planets circling many stars, and Pluto has been demoted. And no one knows what to do with good carbs, bad carbs, and on and on.