Science Quote by Michael Behe

Sixty years is the kind of number that sounds like humility but functions like leverage. Behe’s line plants a flag in the psychology of scientific discovery: what feels settled and “obvious” now was literally invisible to trained observers within living memory. The intent isn’t to give you a tidy astronomy lesson; it’s to quietly destabilize confidence. If cosmology could miss something as basic as expansion until the 20th century, the argument goes, then today’s blind spots might be just as large.

The subtext is strategic, especially coming from Behe, a biochemist famous for criticizing aspects of evolutionary theory. By choosing a clean, non-controversial example (Hubble-era expansion) he borrows credibility from science’s own history while nudging the reader toward a broader skepticism: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It’s a rhetorical move that sounds pro-science because it cites a scientific triumph, yet it can be deployed to defend ideas that sit uneasily within mainstream scientific consensus.

Context matters: the expansion of the universe wasn’t observed because no one was curious; it required new instruments, better data, and a theoretical frame that could interpret redshift as cosmic motion rather than local oddities. That’s why the line works. It compresses a messy story of technology, interpretation, and paradigm shifts into a single, unsettling fact.

It also flatters the present reader: you’re invited to imagine yourself among the few who see what others miss. That’s the cultural appeal, and the risk. Scientific revolutions happen, but not every hunch is Hubble’s.