Science is a way of thinking much more than an accumulation of knowledge. Its purpose is to find out how the world works, to look for laws of one kind or another that may be found in the world, to penetrate into the context of things - from subnuclear particles, which are perhaps the components of all matter
You have no wealth except in the inexhaustible abundance of nature. He shows us only the surface of things, but he is deeper than the sea.
Ralph Vlado Emerson
Science is a way of thinking much more than an accumulation of knowledge. Its purpose is to find out how the world works, to look for laws of one kind or another that may be found in the world, to penetrate into the context of things - from subnuclear particles, which are perhaps the components of all matter, through living organisms, the human social community, and from there into the universe as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our feelings may be distorted by training and prejudices or simply due to the limitations of our sensory organs, those organs that are, of course, capable of directly sensing only a small part of the phenomena of the world.
When Aristotle/and almost everyone else before Galileo was presented with such a seemingly obvious question as, would a kilogram of poultry fall, in the absence of friction, faster than a gram of feathers, they would give the wrong answer. Science is based on experiment, on the willingness to challenge old dogmas, on openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science must also demand courage - at the very least the courage to challenge conventional wisdom.
Beyond that, the main trick of science is to really think about something: the shape of the clouds and their sharp lower edges, which are at the same height everywhere in the sky; The formation of a drop of dew on a leaf: the origin of a name or a word - for example, Shakespeare or "philanthropic"; The reasons for human social customs - for example, the taboo on incest: why can a lens focus sunlight and set paper on fire; Why is a "walking stick" so similar to a branch: why does the moon seem to follow us as we walk; What prevents us from digging a hole to the heart of the earth; What is the definition of "down" on the spherical earth: what allows the body to turn yesterday's meal into today's muscles and tendons; And looking from above - does the universe continue to infinity, if not, is there any significance to the question of what is on the other side? Among these questions there are some that are quite easy. Others, especially the last one, are mysteries that no one knows how to answer even today. It is natural to present these questions. Every culture has presented such questions in one way or another, the proposed answers are almost always along the lines of "this is this", meaning giving reasoning in isolation from the experiment, or even from strict comparative observations.
But the scientific way of thinking examines the world with a critical eye, as if many alternative worlds could exist, as if there could be other things that are not here. Then we will try to ask why the thing we see exists and not something else. Why do the sun and the moon and the planets have the shape of a sphere? Why not the shape of pyramids, or cubes or dozens? Why don't they have mixed and disordered forms? Why are they so symmetrical? If you take some time to make hypotheses, to see if they make sense, if they fit with other things we know, to think of tests you can offer to confirm or reject your hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science. And if you get more and more used to this way of thinking, I'm sure you'll get better. To penetrate the heart of the thing - even a small thing, a stub of grass, as Walt Whitman said - is to experience a feeling of elation that it is possible because of all the creatures on this planet, only humans are capable of feeling it. We were conceived as intelligent beings and it is likely that the use of our intelligence will give us proper pleasure. In this sense the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel well. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.
But to what extent do we gossip to really know the universe around us? This question is sometimes presented by people who hope for a negative answer, who fear a universe in which one day we may know everything. And sometimes we hear statements from scientists who state with confidence that anything worth knowing will indeed be known soon, or perhaps it is already known, and paint pictures of a Dionysian or Polynesian era, that the desire for intellectual discoveries has faded in me completely and in its place comes a sort of pickled laxity in which lotus eaters drink fermented coconut milk or some kind Another sweet licinogenic drink. Not only does this claim do an injustice both to the Polynesians, who were explorers made of bali-hat (and whose short rest in Paradise is now approaching the sad end), and to the inspiration for intellectual discoveries that can be derived from some hallucinogenic substances, it also suffers from several errors.
Let's open with a much more modest question: not if we can know the universe or the Milky Way or a planet or a world, but can we know, completely and in detail, a grain of salt? Let's look at one microgram of table salt, a dot just big enough for a one-eyed person to see without a microscope. In this grain of salt there are about 10 to the 16 atoms of sodium and chlorine. That is to say, the number 1 is followed by 16 zeros or 10 million billion atoms. If we want to know a grain of salt, we will have to know at the very least the three-dimensional thickness of each of these atoms (after all, we need to know much more - by way of analogy, the nature of the forces between the atoms - but we are only making a modest calculation here). This number, is it larger or smaller than the number of details that the brain can. In your opinion?
How much can the brain know? It has perhaps 10 to the repetition of 11 neurons, meaning 10 to the power of 11 switches and circular elements, entrusted, in fact, by their electrical and chemical activity, to the functioning of our brains. A typical brain neuron has perhaps a thousand small hairs called dendrites, which connect it with other neurons. If every piece of information in the brain corresponds to one of these connections, and this is certainly conceivable, it means that the total number of things the brain is capable of thinking is no greater than 20 to the power of 14 hundred trillion. But this number is only one percent of the number of atoms inside our grain of salt.
It thus turns out that the universe in this sense is incomprehensible, immune to the point of astonishment against any human attempt to obtain complete knowledge. At this level we won't be able to understand even a grain of salt, let alone an entire universe, but let's look a little deeper into the microgram of salt. The salt is a crystal and the position of each sodium and chlorine atom in it is predetermined, apart from defects in the structure of the crystal lattice. If we could shrink into this crystalline world, because then we would see rows upon rows of atoms in an orderly array, a regular lattice structure - sodium, chlorine, sodium, chlorine, which defines the sheet of atoms on which we stand and all the sheets above and below us. The position of each atom within a perfectly fine crystal of salt is defined by something equivalent to 10-bits of information." This does not stretch the brain's information capacity.
[Chlorine is a deadly poisonous gas that was used on the battlefields of Europe in the First World War. Sodium is a corrosive metal that ignites in contact with water. These two elements together create a calm and non-toxic substance, ordinary table salt. Why each of these substances is evident in its properties and not necessarily in others, this is a subject called chemistry. To understand, more than 10 pieces of information are needed. ]
If the universe had natural laws that determine its behavior with the same degree of regularity that prevails in every grain of salt, because then it would obviously be a universe that could be known. Even if there were many such laws, each of them quite complex, it was still possible for humans to be able to understand them all. Even if such knowledge were beyond the brain's information capacity, we could store the additional information outside of our bodies - in books, for example, or in computer memories - and we would still be able, in a sense, to please the universe.
Humans are very interested, through nature, in finding connections of regularity, natural laws. The search for laws, the only possible way to understand such a complex and vast universe, is called science. The universe forces the life within it to understand it. Those creatures - to whom everyday existence seems like a jumble of events, without the ability to predict, without regularity, are in grave danger. The universe belongs to those who have deciphered it at least to a certain degree.
After all, it is an impressive fact that there are laws of nature, laws that conveniently summarize - not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively - the way the world works. We could imagine a universe in which there are no laws of this kind, and 10- to the power of eighty - its elementary particles, which make up a universe like ours, behave in complete and uncompromising randomness. If we wanted to understand such a universe we would need a mind that would be at least as massive as the universe. It is unlikely that such a universe could hold life and intelligence, since living beings and minds need a certain degree of internal stability and order, but even if in a much more random universe there existed beings of greater intelligence, there would not be much knowledge, passion or desire from the dead. Khuda
Fortunately, we live in a universe where all temptations have important recognizable parts. Common sense and our evolutionary history have trained us to understand something of the everyday world. But when we enter other realms it becomes clear that common sense and ordinary intuition prove to be incredibly unreliable guides. After all, it is amazing that our mass has increased to infinity, that as we approached the speed of light, we shrink in the modest direction to the point of zero and that time alone almost stands still as we would like. Many people think that this thing is stupid, and once every week or two I get a letter from someone who complains about it. And yet, this is a certain conclusion that is clearly warranted not only from the experiments, but also from the brilliant analysis of space and time, called the special theory of relativity, the fruit of Albert Einstein's genius. It is not important that these phenomena seem illogical to us. We are not used to traveling at speeds approaching the speed of light. The testimony of our common sense is suspect at high speeds.
Or let's imagine an isolated molecule consisting of two atoms shaped more or less like a dumbbell - it might be a molecule of salt. Such a molecule revolved around an axis passing through the line connecting the two atoms. But in the world of quantum mechanics, in the realm of tiny things, there are orientations of our weight-molecule that are impossible.
It is possible for the molecule to be positioned in either a horizontal position or a vertical position, but not at many angles between the two. There are rotational positions that are prohibited. Forbidden by virtue of what? By virtue of the laws of nature. The universe is structured in such a way as to limit rotation to certain quantum states. We do not directly predict this in everyday life; How amazing and strange things will look to us if in the exercises in the universe it becomes clear to us that it is permissible to spread our hands to the sides or lift them up, but it is forbidden to place them in many intermediate positions. We don't live in the world of small things, on the scale of 10 to the power of minus 13 centimeters, in a kingdom where twelve zeros distinguish between the decimal point and the number one. Intuition of all honest, is out of the question. What comes to mind is the experiment - in this case observations from the far infrared spectrum of the molecules. And these observations show that the molecular rotation is subject to certain quantum rules.
Basically the idea that the world places limits on what humans can do is frustrating. Why can't we have rotational intermediate positions? Why can't we travel faster than the speed of light? But as far as we know, this is the way of the universe. This is how it is built. Not only do such prohibitions impose a little humility on us, they also help us to know the world better. Each limitation corresponds to a natural law, to the regularization of the universe. The more limitations there are on what matter and energy can do, the more knowledge we humans can gain. If we can eventually get to know the universe in some sense, then this is a matter that depends not only on the question of the number of natural laws that encompass a wide variety of phenomena, but also on whether we have the openness and intellectual capacity necessary to understand such laws. There is no doubt that we articulate the regularities of nature depending on the structure of our brains, but we also do so, and to a significant extent, depending on the structure of the universe.
As for myself, I prefer a universe that holds much of the unknown, and at the same time, also much of what is open to knowledge. A universe in which everything is known will probably be static and uninteresting, like the heaven of some feeble-minded theologians. An unrecognizable universe is not a suitable place for a thinking creature. The ideal universe for us is largely a drama universe for the one we find ourselves in. And Harini dares to guess that this is not just a random summons.
* From the book "The Mind of Broca", Sefrit Maariv, 1981 from the English of Dr. Naomi Carmel
