People once believed that earth was the center of the universe, the focus of all life forms and energy. The sun and the moon were rising and setting in definite motions, as if God had assigned them to accompany us day and night perpetually. The power to produce life and the energy to sustain it all seemed to originate from where we stood.

We eventually found this was not true.

Human-centered notions of life had to be changed, and a system of new applications gradually replaced the earlier establishment, or culture and order of life. Science and astronomy, in particular, had to be re-calculated, re-established, and re-articulated. Education was modified to reflect the new center of the universe— which was to be somewhere else.

People also believed the earth was flat, and there was a point beyond which we would fall off or could possibly crawl onto the other side. They had persuasive supporting evidence, so conclusions offered by the learned people of the day must have been correct.

In time, we discovered how naïve that belief was, too. Another standing “fact” was revoked. Elaborate systems of life, education, and culture required changing. Beliefs and establishments would be altered dramatically. As some simplistic examples, maps were redrawn, and human travel was charted all over again.

These misconceptions came from people’s dependency on visual cues. Throughout history, we have come to accept that “seeing is believing.” While relying on our extraordinary vision, we can disregard other perceptive faculties. We must wonder whether the power is in the testimony, or in our eyes.

Let me explain. Powerful testimony, or evidence, might exist for our sense of intuition, or our understanding of right and wrong. Granted, many of us may have written intuition off as fictional. The perceptive power of our eyes can mislead us, and cause us to misdirect and become dependent. For example, a powerful telescope distinctly reveals the subjects it’s pointing at, but it also denies us the broader scope outside of its relatively diminutive field of view.