Science

I knew it was only a matter of time before I posted something about science on here. Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long. Ever since I've been in college, I've had the privilege to taste from the table of the greatest scientists who ever lived. Carl Sagan, Luigi Galvani, Rene Descartes, Johann Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Democritus, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Sean Carroll, Marie Curie, Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Oliver Sacks, Watson & Crick, Daniel Levitin, Ludwig Boltzmann, whoever came up with the brilliant idea of entropy, and (most importantly) God are only a few of the incredibly intelligent scientists that I've come to idolize. I've probably only said about 1% of them here, I could go on for days. Oh, yes, and I'm a geek. I'm going to say it right now because it's going to make the rest of this post so much easier to read. Anyway, the reason I am so fascinated with these people is that they were able to create completely new things. It takes such a remarkably diverse skill set to be able to create things that I can think of these people as no less than utter geniuses. So what does it take to be one of these geniuses?

Determination/Dedication
I would be no less than completely surprised if any one of the scientists I mentioned didn't have absolute passion for what they were doing. Every time I think of the structure of DNA or the wiring of the brain or the organization of the cosmos, I think, Whoever did this much work thinking this up must have had a reason for it. I can't comprehend the kind of passion it would take to stir a pot of radioactive radium for a full day without stopping, try 605 failed medications for curing syphilis before finding one that actually worked, try thousands of ways to light a coiled filament (yes, I know he stole from Tesla), or many of the other spectacular feats of perseverance that famous scientists have come to be known for. I could never do that. I got frustrated enough trying to get only the stupid heading to this paragraph to be bolded and the rest of it in normal type (oh yeah, I'm also terrible with technology). What these scientists must have realized in the course of their work was that they were truly connected to something greater, and trivialities such as fatigue, frustration, and failure should not, could not, and would not deter them. They were truly inspired. I don't believe that science disproves or ever has disproven the existence of God; in fact, I am firmly convinced of quite the contrary (a belief which I could and may possibly write a whole entire other post about). I think that God, being the creator of all worlds and all the glorious, beautiful science that governs them, truly wants us to understand just how He was able to do the things he did, or at least to the puny extent that we can in this life. He wants us to understand science, and I believe many of the people I have mentioned were either directly or indirectly inspired by Him to conduct and formulate the marvelous and wonderful experiments and ideas they did.

Unrivalled Cognitive Abilities
Yeah, I know that sounds weird. Let me explain. If you've ever heard about Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive learning (thanks to Matt Veibell and McKay Easton for letting me in on the wonders of this thing), you'll know that the top two tiers of the pyramid are evaluation and synthesis (it is currently contested as to which should be at the top; even I haven't really decided which is cognitively greater). Every great scientist who has ever lived has possessed one or (usually) both of these attributes to some great extent. Evaluation is the process of critically judging material that has been submitted in the past and making a claim as to its validity. It is what makes science self-correcting. Synthesis is the process of making entirely new ideas out of almost nothing. It is what advances science and allows us to have new ideas about the world. Of course, both of these processes can result in completely dumbfounded and bullheaded ideas, such as that of Venus being an offshoot of Jupiter and causing such cosmological anomalies as the prolonging of the days around Jesus' birth or the lengthening of the days in the Israelites' battle with the Amalekites (not sure if I got the tribe right on that one). Seriously, there was an actual theory about this. Watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series if you don't believe me. So science can create some stupid ideas from some pretty confused people. But the funny thing is, that's not the problem. As Carl Sagan says of this theory in his TV series, the problem isn't that this idea is completely stupid and wrong. The problem is that people rejected it at face value without any proof or evidence. The fascinating thing about science (one of them, anyway) is that ideas can be made that sound completely illogical and indefensible, and still be right. Scientists laughed and ridiculed at Galileo's proposal of a sun-centered solar system just as much as the Venus-child-of-Jupiter theory probably was (maybe even moreso). But Galileo was RIGHT! Everything he said sounded absolutely wrong in his time, but we know it today to be accurate and descriptive of how the solar system really works. Such are the possible results of the synthesis process. What evaluation brings to science is that it takes these ideas, compares them to the data that is present, and refines or rejects the theory with respect to its validity. Evaluation is what threw out the Venus idea and accepted the Galilean model for the solar system. One caveat to this point, though, is that it MUST be done with evidence. Evaluation without evidence is just what happens when people try to judge scientific theories without any justification. Evaluation without evidence is what Sagan said was wrong. It's a slow, tedious process, but we must learn to accept that judging theories relies crucially upon the interpretation of empirical evidence (although I believe this applies more to science than to more aesthetic matters like philosophy and religion). Evaluation and synthesis require the highest of minds to execute. Think of the ingenuity and inspiration it must take to create something out of nothing! How did Newton think of gravity? How did Boltzmann and others think of entropy? How did Einstein think of relativity? Essentially, they had the minds able to comprehend such complex processes, and the imaginations necessary to entertain such impressions.

Luck
Yep...not much I can say about this. (Insert cheesy smile and thumbs-up sign here.) Maybe if you carry Madame Zeroni up the mountain, you can break the curse that your no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather put on your family and finally develop the breakthrough recipe for Sploosh that you've been working on for years (and I truly hope somebody got that reference, or I just looked really stupid). I will say, though, that patience is an important part to having luck. Luck comes to everyone eventually, it just takes longer for some than it does for others. Patience is a principle that is pretty thoroughly tied to dedication and perseverance in that all of them require passion, so I'll leave it alone for now.

INSPIRATION
God gives valuable knowledge to more than just prophets. Although it could be considered that these scientists were a kind of prophet in themselves. As I said before, I believe science couldn't be more in agreement with religion. And I think that many of the scientists I've mentioned believe this way too. I think it's an unfair stereotype to write all physicists off as atheists just because they believe in the Big Bang, or to write all biologists off as agnostic just because they believe in evolution. I think that the Big Bang and evolution are both plausible and supportable ideas that accurately explain many things, and I still believe in God. Science is one of those things that's religiously neutral, just as a white paper viewed behind colored cellophane wrapping; it changes based on your perspective. An atheist could use science just as easily to support his negation of God's existence as I could to support my affirmation of God's existence. It neither proves nor disproves that there is truly a God. I believe that science is in accordance with religion because my whole life has been a background in religion, but if I had a different background I may believe otherwise (although I am thankful that I did not...and I think I could write another blog post about this too). Basically, I think that no one can ever completely destroy or affirm God in his mind at this stage of life. No one can ever fully embrace doubt, neither can they completely get rid of it in mortality. I like to think (and yes, I'm going out on a limb here) that most of the theories that scientists came up with were based on the belief that something made all this. Maybe not necessarily God, but something. And that something is what pushed them. That something is what kept them going through all the failures and accidents and explosions (although explosions are what would keep me going) to push on to victory.