This is (one of many reasons) why Feynman's QED book is so great; it covers thoroughly a beautiful and unintuitive theory that we know is true to a very good level of approximation. And he uses it to explain things that you can go out and look at without fancy equipment, without advanced degrees in mathematics or physics. If you have not read this book, then I encourage you to pick it up immediately. It is simply stunning.
Today's post, The Beauty of Settled Science was originally published on 24 March 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Most of the stuff reported in Science News is false, or at the very least, misleading. Scientific controversies are topics of such incredible difficulty that even people in the field aren't sure what's true. Read elementary textbooks. Study the settled science before you try to understand the outer fringes.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was If You Demand Magic, Magic Won't Help, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.