The most surprising thing that I heard in the Professor Firestein video was the discussion of our perception of time before the era of clocks. How did humans navigate their material world differently without a concerted sense of time? Firestein's mention of the annular and cyclic vs the longitudinal and linear was really interesting in terms of illustrating an overarching shift in human perception. I wonder how future technologies may continue to change our basic understanding and means of interacting with the world around us.
I found Professor Firestein's Ignorance course to be a really fascinating parallel to this class with Prof. Goodman which had me thinking about the connection between our lack of knowledge/the undiscovered and the nature of prediction. While these have been put in the unknown unknowns slot in the context of this class, I wonder if the ignorance framework considers time more or less in the process of discovery. Does the act of predicting initiate a discrete process where the process of ignorance to knowledge acquisition is more gradient-like and as such lends itself to a different way of looking at science and uncertainty in general? These questions were definitely floating around their conversation.
I agree, Prof Firestein has some great insights on time! I guess farmers even in ancient times relied on cyclic cycles of light and dark. Or maybe they relied on others for timekeeping like roosters that have a cyclic clock built in that helps them anticipate sunrise. Ancient Egyptians used sundials or shadow clocks which somewhat permitted one to measure the passage of hours. It's interesting to see how timekeeping technology has evolved over time.