Loren Eiseley once wrote, "If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." Dr. Eiseley was an incredible man and merely reading the Wikipedia entry on his life makes me feel inadequate. However, as his writing was accessible, readable, and downright inspiring to the lay audience, I am going to assume that Dr. Eiseley's thinking is more in line with Galileo than Newton. Newton would have called me a "little smatterer" in natural science, I am sure. Jerk.
Truly I did not start this post to call Sir Isaac Newton names. I was having trouble thinking of something to say and my eyes fell upon the framed poster on my wall that highlights Dr. Eiseley's words.
I am going to reveal something to you now - my heart hopes for magic. Not card tricks and distraction games, but a magic made of the beautiful complexity of this world; something beyond that which we initially see. Doesn't everyone? I think that's why some people are so upset by science. They are afraid that investigation into the beautiful magic of our world will destroy the spark that is there. If we look too close, if we pry too forcefully, we will be left holding the broken pieces, wishing we could undo what was done. That is a sad thought... it makes me sad just to write the words down and see them on this screen.
But let me tell you something. I don't believe for a minute that we will lose the beauty, lose the magic. I think that the deeper we look the more we will stand amazed. To think that we, tiny individuals that we are, could somehow do something that would reveal this world as a sham, that would uncover the Great Oz as just a man behind a curtain cheapens that beauty, that magic. Science does not destroy, it explains. With each explanation, we may find a little piece of the puzzle, but we also find a new trail of questions to follow. There is no bottom of the bucket. There is no sidewalk's end. There is no edge of the map where we tumble into nothingness. The beauty and mystery of this world are nigh infinite.
I think King Solomon captured this thought perfectly over 2000 years ago. A great scholar and wise man of his time, he wrote (and I'm paraphrasing here) that it is the nature or glory of God to conceal a matter and that it is the nature of royalty (some people update this to "scientists") to discover. That is why I do what I do - why I love science and respect what we can do as scientists. This is also why I value communication. I want to help scientists communicate this delicate beauty to other people in ways that allow those people to see the beauty in investigating the magic that exists in our world.
Proverbs 25:2
ReplyDelete2 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter;
to search out a matter is the glory of kings.
Also remember, Sir Isaac Newton converted to mysticism in his 30s. After helping to invent calculus and providing the Laws of Motion... he spent the rest of his life trying to become an alchemist in order to convert lead to gold.
But all the painstaking methodology of the alchemists became the chemist's toolbox. And eventually, we got aspirin out of it. So alchemy and magic was not all bad.
I think people hate science because they do not understand it, and somehow, equate science with an invalidation of their primary belief systems. It comes from a lack of understanding and in America, you always have an opinion before you learn any facts. It's just the way we are, and it's part of the "ugly American" meme that precedes us in the world at large.
I agree; however, I have since learned (and will post soon) that "anti-science" opinion is even worse in Turkey.
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