SCIENCE

I know I spend a lot more time on religion than I do on science – that’s because I’d need a few decades-worth of college just to understand the questions in science! Whereas religion, alas, gives one all the ammo one could wish. I do believe in the scientific method, and I applaud the brave souls not only trying to figure out what’s what, but staking their reputations and livelihoods all too often on the answers.

Just, lest we rely on scientific reasoning too much, let’s remember that all the laws of physics, biology, all the ologies, really, life, the universe and everything, all apply to only 4% of the universe. Either that, or we have no idea what gravity is (with apologies to Sir Isaac Newton). And the really sad thing is, it’s true – we really know not much more about gravity than Einstein dared imagine. Even though I’m not a bizzillionaire, I’d like to lobby for getting this issue looked into! Let’s also keep in mind that science doesn’t have answers to such questions as “What is reality?” and whether everything we know of is made of vibrating strings, branes, or bits of pure information, or even, as the New-Agers would have it, of thought itself.

And pseudo-science is NOT the answer. Just because real scientists dumb down the message almost enough for people like me to nearly understand it, that doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it. The idea that our “intentions” affect reality is based on some creative thinking. Are you familiar with the question of whether light is a wave or a particle? (Yes, we don’t know what light is, either...) In that experiment, whether or not the experiment was being observed seemed to affect the outcome. Now, if the light doesn’t know whether you’ll be watching or not, it couldn’t do that, and the way I understand it, our INTENTION to observe must therefore be affecting the outcome, because it works even if we tape it and observe it LATER. If that’s not correct, I beg you, explain it to me! But this is very different than saying that anything you can conceive of can be yours (for a progressively larger fee, naturally).

That brings up science’s biggest problem today; how can scientists, who concentrate for an entire career on particles too small for us to see even with the greatest super-microscope, explain to ordinary people what they’re doing and why it matters? If they end with the sentiment that a new technology has been borne out of these experiments, that we get. We LOVE our cell-phones, our tweets and twits and magic boxes of music. Anything that makes more gadgets, we like. But how will we ever know anything if we can’t even figure out gravity? It’s not like it’s a new thing. Or light? Wasn’t that one of the first things ever to exist, in EVERYONE’S creed?

The real question is, if it weren’t for the possibility it could supply us with ever brighter toys, would sciences like quantum physics even be called science? Because science, as I understand it, is supposed to EXPLAIN things, not make them more mysterious. According to Dictionary.com, science is: “Systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” The operative word being KNOWLEDGE, not imagination or mathematical proof.

Of course we need specialists, and I can certainly see supporting agricultural and pharmaceutical or medical sciences, whether we can understand them or not. But the truth is, in spite of our great technological strides, we don’t know what the basic components of our world are, and some of us care.