Quote:
Originally Posted by Sowa
My question is why is it necessary that people know what a light year is? It's not knowledge that 99.9% of people need or will find useful at anytime during their life.
|
Knowledge has intrinsic value; it does not have to fulfill a need or be useful.
That being said, the concept of a light-year is important in understanding cosmology, which is important in understanding how the universe began, which is important in understanding why, for example (and only for example, I am not interested in yet another creation debate), young-earth creationists are hopelessly deluded. That is just one example of how all knowledge is interrelated and how knowing seemingly "useless" facts and definitions in one subject deepens one's understanding in many, seemingly unrelated subjects.
People without the grounding in such knowledge often are prone to having utterly absurd beliefs about the nature of reality; the danger of this is, no doubt, obvious.