The Nevada Sagebrush

Barry Belmont

There is one way (and one way only) to truly grasp the essence of the universe: science. This is not to say you can’t get anything out of a good movie and learn something deep from Dostoevsky, or that the shivers that run up your back when you hear that one high-note climax near the end of the song you’ve had in your head all day is meaningless.

Rather, it is to say that these feelings are just that — feelings — and to truly understand everything around you, science is the only game in town.

Since you didn’t balk at the last line for being “so obvious,” this means that scientists are still faced with a populace that, while appreciating the fruit of science’s labors (namely, technology), still resists the idea that the natural world is utterly explainable by natural means. Why?

Well, one familiar critique is that science takes the mystery out of life, the universe and everything. Many believe that science is cold, logical, boring and not relevant to the everyday warm, chaotic, and exciting life that we all wish to lead.

In fact, this is quite an old position, one that has been spouted ever since the scientific revolution. John Keats, one of those boring English poets you hear about in core humanities, even went so far as to claim that in explaining the nature of light more thoroughly than anyone before him, Isaac Newton had explained away the beauty of the rainbow.

Others claim that science just can’t be the answer. These people often believe that supernatural phenomena exist, and since science does not account for this aspect of their lives, it must necessarily be wrong.

But this opinion is flawed. Consider, for example, that the owner’s manual of your car doesn’t explain anything beyond the function of the car. It’s not wrong because it can’t explain how to cook eggs. That just happens to be beyond its scope. Just like supernatural phenomena are outside the realm of science.

So what can science tell us about? In addition to the physical sciences of physics, chemistry, geology, hydrology, astronomy, paleontology, meteorology and biology; the formal sciences of computer science, mathematics and cybernetics; and even the social sciences of anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology, there are the innumerable applied sciences (from engineering to dentistry) that directly affect each and every one of us practically every minute of every day.

And the scientific method explains all of it. It explains why your computer can crash when locked in a subroutine and why Plasmodium’s life cycle makes malaria such a deadly disease. But science doesn’t just tell us what the facts are. It tells us what we can do to manipulate them. Science, in its grandest sense, is humankind’s truest ability to understand and change the world around itself.

Yet there are still those who wish to see the scientific world view destroyed. Christian fundamentalists, Islamic extremists and (until recently) the governments of Russia and China believe that science is the cornerstone of all that is wrong with the world.

But, what exactly is the harm of observing the world, posing hypotheses based on those observations, predicting the consequences of those hypotheses and experimentally determining the truth?

Barry Belmont studies two sciences and really not much else. Reach him at perspectives@nevadasagebrush.com.

Related Posts:

• Horoscopes are a fake system for insight into personalities
• Math proves alien life highly probable, contact unlikely
• Reason through statements to mine meaning or reject as false
• Palindromes appear in nature, dates
• Use critical thinking skills to avoid believing common myths