"I don't want to
believe, I want to know."
- Carl Sagan
It was a clear winter evening of November, not a regular thing I know, but this just happens to be one. The wind was still tingly cold. As I chugged down some hot coffee, I looked up at the sky to notice birds flying in a "V-Shape". Distorted the shape was, but the sight stirred my emotions. Why do they fly in a certain shape? Did someone teach them? Clearly birds couldn't have cooked up this gimmick all by themselves?
We humans are story telling and pattern seeking
animals- we tend to delude ourselves when our emotions are stirred.
We have a distinct memory of the instances where a pop tune rings in
our head and suddenly a friend sings it! Clearly this was no
co-incidence?. We tend to, in that emotional stir, forget that our
head resonates with non-sense all the time. We don't keep a count of
all the days where the tune was persistent but not the co-incidence.
It's like football, the goal keeper is commented when the opposition
scores a goal whilst all the goals he saved are not discussed as
rigorously.
Every phenomenon is beautiful in it's own way. Some for
example- Sunrise, convection of fluids and frank reed sources have "Patterns" that
can be recognized by us Humans. Other's like- Brownian motion,
Dislocations inside a Crystal do not! It's beauty and the truth
associated with it are not determined by our convenience.
We evolved from primates and hence have an affinity
towards dominance hierarchy-
Let us go back to the "V- formation of the birds".
The coffee, the sky and my mood were brilliant that day(not a regular
thing I know), now add to that some sort of bliss and we have a
recepie for self deception. I can for instance, tell my self that
some "Father figure" harnessing all knowledge and wisdom
told the birds to make a "V" and not any other alphabet
like a "Q" or "O" because he wants us to
remember that he was born of a Virgin.
Or I can contend with facts, that this "V-
formation" makes an aerodynamic shape, enabling the birds to
travel long distances. Surely the bird in the front takes the maximum
air-drag, but it makes flight a lot easier to all the others. If we
carefully watch their flight we would indeed notice that, after a
period of time the bird in the front "takes a break" and
the next "important one" comes in the front. Something like
our political campaign, the candidate "taking the heat"
from criminal allegations, "steps back from the front"
until it dies down and he's ready to compete for the next tenure (No
I'm not sub-consciously thinking of Narendra Modi).
Read more about V-formation:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_formation
Knowing rather than hopeless rationalization or
believing, helps build scientific temper. It increases the
competitive edge in a world arranged on science. It also surges the
awe,wonder and most importantly teaches us humility- a trait which
helps us to understand our place in the universe and gives a sense of
"Spiritual connection".
Consider now a scientist working on a new theory to
explain high temperature superconductivity. Not an easy thing to do
really, he has to theorize something on a scale of atoms and
electrons, a very unfriendly scale to humans. It is tiring for him
to analyse, imagine and relate his findings from the "Sister
experiments". So he spends himself in the theory, he
romanticizes it. All his social conversations at dinner tables now
become awful since he is occupied with his own strife. Everything
happening around him- movie songs, news titles and random family
issues, remind him about his work.
He realizes now that he is now in a relation, a love affair with his own theory! Our scientist finally wraps up his whole business with the cold outside world and goes into a happy isolated affair with his theory. As the moment of truth approaches, when he puts his theory to experimental scrutiny, the numbers and results don't match-up. Now he has to wash his mind of that mishap, he has to drain all the negativity, his partner broke up!
Our subjective reality, no matter how sweet our
rationalization of the phenomenon is to us, is not a measure of
truth! Science lay's down facts with a straight face! Science is far
away from knowing everything and it's clearly not going to be easy.
But this is the best thing we ever had! We should try our best to add
to the body of knowledge and reduce the error margin as generations
pass. We also have to tirelessly and wirelessly promote scientific
thought and leave scant room for delusions and ignorance.
No comments:
Post a Comment