She blinded me with SCIENCE!
One of the comments left recently on my blog reminded me of an anecdote involving a dim scientist and a questionable conclusion:
A scientist placed a frog on his laboratory table and ordered it to jump – it did as it was told and the scientist noted “frog with four legs jumps when told.” He then cut off one of the frog’s legs and again ordered it to jump. Again it did as it was told and again the scientist noted the results in his journal. He repeated this twice more, each time cutting off a leg, telling the frog to jump and noting the results. Finally he cut off the frog’s last leg and ordered it to jump. It sat there staring at him. After repeating the command several times with no success, he noted in his journal ‘frog with no legs cannot hear.’
I remember several instances in my studies over the years when I suddenly understood the mechanics behind something which before seemed almost magical. Examples are the way the body regulates gene expression by using the resulting proteins as inhibitors to the expression itself, the way gravitational tide forces ensure the orbital period of a satellite dampens to its rotational period, or the way hemoglobin’s oxygen affinity decreases with pH, thus ensuring acidic (active) muscles compete more effectively for oxygen. Each time, the universe seemed a bit less confusing. Of course, as is universally true, education only serves to show you just how little you truly know – each discovery only showed me how much more there was to learn.
Having spent the better part of my life trying to learn from those giants who came before me, I find myself increasingly annoyed by one conclusion in particular – I don’t understand it, so it must be divine. Declaring something to be divine because the human race (or worse, just you) lacks the understanding to explain it scientifically is certainly nothing new – after all, divinity has long been used to explain that which science could not (stars were first considered lights fixed to the celestial sphere, then they were solid entities moved by an intelligent force before they were finally understood to be balls of gas governed by the well-understood laws of nuclear fusion). However, the confidence with which those with no scientific training declare misunderstood phenomena to be divine makes me laugh – and that people listen to them makes me nervous.
I don’t expect those who aren’t exposed to them to understand gene expression or gravitational torques any more than I understand tax codes or operatic techniques, but I am consistently astounded by their conclusions regarding the various equilibria which exist in the natural world. Upon observing a ball balanced perfectly atop a hill, they confidently state that some divine entity must have placed it there, never considering that only the perfectly balanced ball remains atop the hill long enough to be observed. The details are more complex than that, but the basic idea is not – in so many physical systems, the equilibrium state is selected for by the natural laws which govern the universe. The presence of spectacular fine-tuning as my commenter put it is evidence of divine intervention only if you choose to ignore some very basic scientific mechanisms.
This brings to mind a larger question – what will be the end result of our collective scientific endeavor? Will science eventually reason away the need for a god, or will it slowly shrink our knowledge gap to a finite set of questions whose answers elude us indefinitely, thereby defining god? This higher philosophical question is one I could spend days discussing – as to those who claim god exists in the holes of their personal scientific knowledge base, you may find a class or two in whatever magic mystifies you to be downright heavenly :-)
A scientist placed a frog on his laboratory table and ordered it to jump – it did as it was told and the scientist noted “frog with four legs jumps when told.” He then cut off one of the frog’s legs and again ordered it to jump. Again it did as it was told and again the scientist noted the results in his journal. He repeated this twice more, each time cutting off a leg, telling the frog to jump and noting the results. Finally he cut off the frog’s last leg and ordered it to jump. It sat there staring at him. After repeating the command several times with no success, he noted in his journal ‘frog with no legs cannot hear.’
I remember several instances in my studies over the years when I suddenly understood the mechanics behind something which before seemed almost magical. Examples are the way the body regulates gene expression by using the resulting proteins as inhibitors to the expression itself, the way gravitational tide forces ensure the orbital period of a satellite dampens to its rotational period, or the way hemoglobin’s oxygen affinity decreases with pH, thus ensuring acidic (active) muscles compete more effectively for oxygen. Each time, the universe seemed a bit less confusing. Of course, as is universally true, education only serves to show you just how little you truly know – each discovery only showed me how much more there was to learn.
Having spent the better part of my life trying to learn from those giants who came before me, I find myself increasingly annoyed by one conclusion in particular – I don’t understand it, so it must be divine. Declaring something to be divine because the human race (or worse, just you) lacks the understanding to explain it scientifically is certainly nothing new – after all, divinity has long been used to explain that which science could not (stars were first considered lights fixed to the celestial sphere, then they were solid entities moved by an intelligent force before they were finally understood to be balls of gas governed by the well-understood laws of nuclear fusion). However, the confidence with which those with no scientific training declare misunderstood phenomena to be divine makes me laugh – and that people listen to them makes me nervous.
I don’t expect those who aren’t exposed to them to understand gene expression or gravitational torques any more than I understand tax codes or operatic techniques, but I am consistently astounded by their conclusions regarding the various equilibria which exist in the natural world. Upon observing a ball balanced perfectly atop a hill, they confidently state that some divine entity must have placed it there, never considering that only the perfectly balanced ball remains atop the hill long enough to be observed. The details are more complex than that, but the basic idea is not – in so many physical systems, the equilibrium state is selected for by the natural laws which govern the universe. The presence of spectacular fine-tuning as my commenter put it is evidence of divine intervention only if you choose to ignore some very basic scientific mechanisms.
This brings to mind a larger question – what will be the end result of our collective scientific endeavor? Will science eventually reason away the need for a god, or will it slowly shrink our knowledge gap to a finite set of questions whose answers elude us indefinitely, thereby defining god? This higher philosophical question is one I could spend days discussing – as to those who claim god exists in the holes of their personal scientific knowledge base, you may find a class or two in whatever magic mystifies you to be downright heavenly :-)
posted by Nicholas at 2:42 AM
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