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Writer's Block: Proven by Science
Aug. 13th, 2009 08:28 am[Error: unknown template qotd]No, because (for one thing) the phrase "scientific explanation" is meaningless. I believe everything has a reason, and I believe that we will come to understand all the reasons, and science will be one of the most important tools for uncovering those reasons...but it is not the only one. Expecting science to explain everything is like trying to describe the world completely in terms of music.
I have often come across the arguments that (a) our brains are the brains of plains apes and are not equipped to understand the multiverse, and (b) if we ever understood everything it would be bad in some nebulous way, like maybe we'd all fall over and die because there were no more worlds to conquer, or something. I disagree.
(a) is like a proto-hominid saying that proto-hominids will never pick up sticks because their hands are the hands of proto-hominids and have no opposable thumb. If evolution teaches us anything at all, it teaches us that what we have is more than what we started with, and what we will end up with is more than what we have. Change happens. What we needed to pick up, we gained the ability to pick up. What we need to understand, we will gain the capacity to understand. The plains ape will be with us always, probably, but we do grow. May take another million years, and we may die off before it happens, but we do grow.
(b) is just poignant and wistful and all that stuff, but if we don't come to understand everything about how the multiverse works, how will we ever manage to create our own when the time comes? What's so great about staying in the box? It's sad and poignant when you get born, but it gets a lot better after that. At least, so I'm told. :)
These feelings of (a) inadequacy and (b) vague and free-floating terror are, I think, vestigial remnants of religious thinking. (Woo, watch the hackles rise.) We are, in many ways, comfortable being children, even if we refuse to believe in any entity to be a child of. The impulse to worship the 'verse is the impulse to worship a god, and the belief that the 'verse may be beyond our understanding, or that we should not try for some reason, is the foundation of worship.
I don't hold with that kind of religious thinking, especially among the non-religious. I believe intelligence, even ours, is or can be equal to the 'verse, and to the task of understanding it. But I think that great swathes of it have explanations that science will never find on its own. The way to make (a) a self-fulfilling prophecy is to focus on science to the exclusion of all else; to assume that science is the structure of the 'verse, and not simply one of the tools we use to determine that structure.
I have often come across the arguments that (a) our brains are the brains of plains apes and are not equipped to understand the multiverse, and (b) if we ever understood everything it would be bad in some nebulous way, like maybe we'd all fall over and die because there were no more worlds to conquer, or something. I disagree.
(a) is like a proto-hominid saying that proto-hominids will never pick up sticks because their hands are the hands of proto-hominids and have no opposable thumb. If evolution teaches us anything at all, it teaches us that what we have is more than what we started with, and what we will end up with is more than what we have. Change happens. What we needed to pick up, we gained the ability to pick up. What we need to understand, we will gain the capacity to understand. The plains ape will be with us always, probably, but we do grow. May take another million years, and we may die off before it happens, but we do grow.
(b) is just poignant and wistful and all that stuff, but if we don't come to understand everything about how the multiverse works, how will we ever manage to create our own when the time comes? What's so great about staying in the box? It's sad and poignant when you get born, but it gets a lot better after that. At least, so I'm told. :)
These feelings of (a) inadequacy and (b) vague and free-floating terror are, I think, vestigial remnants of religious thinking. (Woo, watch the hackles rise.) We are, in many ways, comfortable being children, even if we refuse to believe in any entity to be a child of. The impulse to worship the 'verse is the impulse to worship a god, and the belief that the 'verse may be beyond our understanding, or that we should not try for some reason, is the foundation of worship.
I don't hold with that kind of religious thinking, especially among the non-religious. I believe intelligence, even ours, is or can be equal to the 'verse, and to the task of understanding it. But I think that great swathes of it have explanations that science will never find on its own. The way to make (a) a self-fulfilling prophecy is to focus on science to the exclusion of all else; to assume that science is the structure of the 'verse, and not simply one of the tools we use to determine that structure.