One of the classes I might take this quarter is called "Workings of the human brain", and for the first lecture, one of the past TAs for the class did a very brief lecture on the history of human perception of the brain. One thing that caught my attention is that, common beliefs on the nature of the brain was dominated for centuries by theories put forth by the likes of Aristotle and Gall. It wasn't until some 1700 years later that Da Vinci came up with the brilliant idea of actually cutting open a corpse to see what the hell was really going on in there.

Now, having been raised in the modern era of science and all, I think it's bloody obvious that if you don't know what's happening, you just find out. That is, if you don't know what's inside someone's head, the obvious way to find out is to cut it open and look inside.

Or so you'd think. But really, this emperical approach revolutionized society not because people before then were so dumb, but simply because it's an approach that actually is quite counter-intuitive. Working with beginning computer science students, I've seen something similar in the lab. A typical "tutor helps 1st year CS student" conversation goes like this:

Student: My program doesn't work
Tutor: What doesn't work?
Student: Well, my program does A, then B. Then it does stuff with A and B to produce results C.
Tutor: ...and?
Student: It doesn't produce the correct results for C.
Tutor: Does it do A and B?
Student: Well, it's supposed do...
Tutor: Well, does it?
Student: Hm... so I should check that?

From what I've seen, the problem is that students build up some intuitive model on how to solve the problem at hand, and get lost when their programs' behaviors deviate from the intuitive model. They seem to get caught up in how the program ought to work, and don't realize that the key is to see what the program is doing.

At the end, I think humans are lazy thinkers, rather than adventurous seekers of knowledge. The poster behind Fox Moulder's desk didn't say "we want to know". It said: we want to believe.