There have been some truly outrageous theories in the last few hundred years: Newton’s law of gravitation, Darwinian evolution, quantum mechanics. I say ‘outrageous’, not because they’re preposterously false (they aren’t or at least they don’t seem to be), but because of the extravagance of what they imply. That every living thing is part of a fully connected family tree? That waves are actually particles? At face value, they would sound absurd if it weren’t for one thing: impact dilution over time. The longer we, as a species, have to comprehend these theories (and to observe their consistent accuracy), the more we become accustomed to them.
Like ‘generational trauma’, I suppose really mind-blowing ideas do require a few generations for them to settle down and diffuse into the common consciousness. The parents who first start considering something deeply, say the existence of black holes, slowly pass on their attitude to their children, in whom a reverence of black holes grows a little more until they pass it on again? Maybe. What I mean to say is that the shocking nature of certain ideas, especially in the sciences which are operating on universal-level scale, does seem to diminish. This leads to two further thoughts: what ideas do we consider outrageous today that likely won’t be considered that way in a hundred years, and what ideas are we now comfortable with even though they’re still outrageous when you look a little closer?