Why Bother with Science?

For 40 years I ignored science. I thought science was a set of miscellaneous obscure facts about things like black holes and quarks and ages of places like the universe. All incomprehensible, remote and full of abstract concepts. All things that would be interesting if you were a person who was interested in those things. Which I wasn't.

I tried to be, honest. It was just so...boring. The word science conjured images of chemistry experiments and laughing preteen boys using the lab to make things that smelled like someone had passed gas. And scientists made me think of geeky guys in lab coats who couldn't get in touch with their feelings, who needed to be opened up by someone like...me, a person who had free access to her feelings all the time and wasn't afraid to show them.

It took me a while, but I discovered I was wrong. There's something wonderful about learning science, even if you're not a scientist. Here's why: Your life becomes much easier, fuller and less expensive (and I mean expensive in all the ways it can be expensive, not just monetarily), and if you don't bother with science you'll never get the whole experience of being human. On the other hand, I can't say that bothering with science will make you happier or less depressed. Still, there's a lot to be said for science, and besides, I personally think happiness is overrated.

So 500 million protons can fit in the space of a dot the size of the period at the end of this sentence. And the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and black holes may or may not obliterate everything that falls into them, and there's an Oort cloud--like a garbage dump of extra bits and bobbles--surrounding our solar system, composed of leftover debris from when the planets were formed. And why on earth would it make any difference to anyone to know this? Paying attention to science provides you with two great things.

One is all the information we as human beings living at this moment can access, the result of centuries of scientific reasoning and experimentation--huge amounts of information that took people a lot of time, pain, diligence, suffering and (concluded on page 154)Sweeney(continued from page 68) persistence to accumulate. And we have it, a gift from our ancestors to us, free of charge, the only price being the time to look for it and learn it.

The second thing science gives us is a way of seeing the world. The scientific method is basically objective rational thinking. You have a hypothesis, and you test it by bringing forth evidence and trying to replicate an outcome, and you begin to see if the idea stands up to tests. You take yourself out of the equation as much as possible. This is not some exotic way of looking at things; it's what we use when we buy a car. It's just a matter of formalizing this system and then applying it to everything.

My dog Arden, a scrappy old fellow I found on my street (he's an Australian cattle dog, according to the vet), doesn't know that his body is made up of atoms that have assembled to make him who he is and that after he dies and decomposes those same atoms will be parts of other things. He doesn't know that the earth, which he so happily prances on, is billions of years old and that our Milky Way galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy in about 3 billion or 4 billion more years. Arden doesn't know he is descended from a dog bred to corral cattle down under.

In fact, to Arden I am God. I decide almost everything in his life--when he eats and when he goes on a hike with me. He is fearful when I'm angry and happy when I approve, and he adjusts his behavior accordingly. Just because he can put together cause and effect doesn't make him a scientist. Arden can't gather information from other dogs around the world, dogs long dead and dogs who've calculated things over and over, and he can't read and understand the results.

Yes, he can smell odors better than I can, and he can hear much, much better than I. But he doesn't know why, when a squirrel crosses our path, he goes insane with uncontrollable zeal and chases that squirrel up a tree. He doesn't realize he was bred to keep rodent-size animals away from the herd, but I can know this, and you can too. Arden can't, and as much as I love Arden, I don't want to be Arden.

I made a shift when I discovered science. It was the most profound event of my life. I went from being an animal like Arden to being an animal who was also a human.

Bothering with science will give you true humility and deep reasons for pride. It could make you more depressed. Viewing the world objectively, more scientifically and less ego-filtered can cause you to see things more clearly--and sometimes reality is not pretty. On the upside, seeing clearly can make you much happier and allow you a glimpse at the miracle that you exist at all. So in terms of mood it's a toss-up.

Science will save you time and anguish. Okay, I know, money and time go hand in hand, so I'll give a time example. I used to spend a lot of time wondering why things happened, because I believed the universe was aware of us humans and had something to do with what happened to us. I spent a lot of time trying to divine what the universe wanted me to do and a lot of time wondering if this event or piece of information was important because of the time it took me to learn it, and I didn't pay much attention to the information.

Now I know the evidence is clear that a human is an animal--a spectacularly wonderful animal but an animal nonetheless--and that the universe doesn't have consciousness and therefore is incapable of caring about us, let alone orchestrating events so we can intuit its meanings.

Granted, this is a bitter pill to swallow. This one took me a few years, and the world was dark and empty at first but then gave way to deep humility and awe. I realized I am subject to tragedy and luck the way anyone else is. I suddenly stopped in my tracks and understood that we know so much: We know how small we are, we know the universe is enormous, and we have some idea about how we got here and what elements compose us. Suddenly protons were quite interesting, thank you. And it was titillating to imagine strings and time bending and supernovas destroying--it was so amazing that it made me just want to...kiss somebody, hard. Maybe you don't feel that way, but I sure do.

So bothering with science made me more like my dog in that I started focusing on how food tasted in all parts of my mouth and how sometimes the air smells like rain and freshly cut grass, and I could hear myself breathing. I was also not at all like my dog, because I'm like him only if I surrender what comes with contemplating things like black holes and galaxies and the big questions. I have a method to the madness, a way of evaluating the world that brings me closer to truth than any other method. That's worth a lot of bother. If Arden only knew, he'd be jealous.