Tolstoy syndrome

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Tolstoy Syndrome is a description of a behavior of humans who ignore the truth despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.^[1] The behavior is named after a quote from Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910): "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life".

A related Tolstoy quote is "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

As an example of the Tolstoy Syndrome, Alfred Wegener, a physicist and metereologist, noticed the jigsaw fit of West Africa and South America and proposed continental drift when he found fossil evidence to suggest these continents were once joined.^[2] Geologists (at that time) mercilessly ridiculed Wegener^[3] until his hypothesis was recognized as plate tectonics. This recognition, however, occurred long after Wegener was lost on a glacier in Greenland in November 1930.

[edit] Notes

^ Glossary. Ask Dr. Stoll. Retrieved on 2006-04-13.
^ Gold, Thomas (1989). "New Ideas in Science". Journal of Scientific Exploration 3 (2): 103-112. Retrieved on 2006-05-13.
^ Hallam, A (1930). Great Geological Controversies. Oxford Science Publications.