{"id":2614,"date":"2013-09-21T08:41:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-21T13:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=2614"},"modified":"2013-11-13T19:55:09","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T00:55:09","slug":"in-two-words-what-defines-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/in-two-words-what-defines-science\/","title":{"rendered":"In two words… what defines “science”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s “asking questions”, of course ( silly! \u00a0;-).<\/span><\/h4>\n

Science is also about asking particular kinds of questions, so you’d be missing a lot if you didn’t also ask “What kinds of questions is that?”… \u00a0and end up getting to the “big picture” by asking “But then,… doesn’t any question both open your mind to one thing and close it to another?”<\/p>\n

So that more precisely defines science is a kind of “open territory” of all the kinds of questions one might ask, hoping to find ones that are particularly “informative” and give us unexpected “insight”, while keeping us clear of “jumping to conclusions” and other pitfalls. \u00a0 It’s a long process of bending our minds to fit the world we seem to be part of, finding ways to both “get along” and to bend the world to suite us, guided by the landscapes, pathways, open skies and hidden traps of “understanding” and “misunderstanding”,talking to “busybodies” and “not so busy bodies”, that one finds traveling beyond “The Phantom Tollbooth” (ref the Juster & Pfeiffer masterpiece).<\/p>\n

\"the<\/p>\n

What have you been wondering about…?<\/p>\n

One of the very most informative and useful questions I ever asked is “What is nature hiding from us?”. \u00a0That question came to me about 25 years after my first highly productive question<\/em> of the kind. which was “what makes life so lively?” \u00a0 \u00a0I’ve had SO<\/em><\/span> much fun with both those questions I really cannot tell you! \u00a0 \u00a0I don’t feel compelled to “look under every leaf and stone”, but having asked those two questions, using them as a kind of “lens” for studying what’s happening around us, it has made it quite likely that in any natural hiding place I look I’ll find traces of things “making life lively” as a way to study what they’re doing and how, along with leading questions about where they’re headed.<\/p>\n

The main answer to “What is nature hiding from us?” is simple, though. \u00a0Because our reasoning minds collect information as an observer of the world, anything we see organized from the inside we see from the outside, as if from a distance. \u00a0So as a consequence what nature is hiding from us is ALL the information about how her living systems work by themselves. \u00a0They’re what make life lively, developing their organization from the inside as they grow, built up around however they began!!<\/p>\n

That observation is itself an immensely satisfying and delightful answer to some scientists, as a vast opening of a door, to recognizing what we’ve been missing about our place on earth… \u00a0 It also, very sadly, causes considerable offense to\u00a0others, as a simply ridiculous insult to the methods, purposes and great usefulness of their social cultures\u00a0and systems of belief<\/span>, not to mention incomes. \u00a0 \u00a0Ultimately those two views boil down to “a choice” of which half of the universe your questions will keep hiding from you! \u00a0 ;-)<\/span><\/p>\n

One might say, to “simplify” the job of explaining the world, as Niels Bohr and Heisenberg did, (paraphrasing) “Who the heck cares about what nature will always hide from us!! \u00a0Science can only work with information, not questions with no answers! \u00a0 Uncertainty is sure to be irrelevant to our concerns except as statistics anyway, won’t it?”<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 I kind of wish that group of scientists would just ask at face value the “dumb question” implied in that retort. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Are statistics the only value of having uncertainty about what’s “out there”
\nbeyond what our information tells us?? \u00a0 <\/span><\/h4>\n

I think it’s better to see it as a choice to make, whether a situation calls for using one assumption or the other, considered as a simple choice to use one or the other “lens” for asking other questions. \u00a0 Things inherently hidden from view might just possibly be quite important to us, right? \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Swiss<\/a><\/p>\n

The design of natural systems as living cells of organization,\u00a0<\/span>is a VERY VERY big thing for nature to hide from us, of course, VERY BIG! \u00a0 It’s everything\u00a0<\/span>built from the inside, seeming to employ very lively and changing kinds of organization and relationships, all as\u00a0<\/span>ways of sustaining the uses of energy to do it, and all\u00a0<\/span>generally hidden from our view. \u00a0 \u00a0So, on first hint of something “out of the box” like that, perhaps all one can say is “Gee whizz!” or “Don’t be ridiculous” or other quick reactions… <\/span><\/p>\n

…and the scientist in you will come back to the unanswered quandaries
\nagain and again till you find an opening,
\nlike a stubborn foraging animal on the trail of the next good meal.<\/span><\/h4>\n

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____________<\/p>\n

For Example<\/em><\/h4>\n