A GUT Feeling: Why I Came Running to Science
I hated my job. My girl was gone, and I lived in a town that wasn’t any fun. I wasn’t blessed with any inclinations to make a lot of money, but I also knew I was completely dissatisfied with what I had. So, when nothing else seemed good enough, and nobody leapt from my modest cadre of friends to tell me what-for, I turned to science.
When others might have picked up religion or philosophy, I read about chaos theory and the new physics. There would be no self-help book or drug of choice; rather, the Selfish Gene and detailed explanations of how my brain decides when my body receives its own dope(amine) as a reward for merely doing the things it’s “designed” to do. I jumped headfirst into a world where everything was (theoretically) explainable, intimately related to the pristine, almost mystically insightful world of mathematics, but at the same time essentially bound to the same humanity I’d found so confusing in the first place.
Perhaps that contradiction is what attracts me to science. It certainly isn’t because I’ve ever displayed much aptitude for it; in school, I took science classes because I had to, and offered the least effort required to get through – and sometimes not even that much. When I was growing up, and during college, science seemed distant, unconcerned with anything I actually cared about. It was something to learn rather than something to love. And I should clarify: I don’t exactly “love” science. If anything, I’m more skeptical of information of all sorts now after having learned a little about “what we know.” Of course, to my delight, skepticism and the desire to peer through the surface of things are qualities that make science and scientists so valuable. So far, reverence doesn’t appear to be the road to empirical truth.
In any case, like all good creeds/hobbies/forms of insanity, the more I discover in science, the more questions I have, and the more driven I am to continue looking for clues. Nevermind that most times I’m not sure what the clues represent, or even what mystery I’m supposed to be solving. It’s the looking I enjoy. For now. The following list features items I value in science beyond its practical and theoretical applications. It’s not that I don’t find those useful or interesting; however, they aren’t what drove me to check out quantum physics or molecular biology. I believe science provides more answers than just the ones scientists are looking for – and as added bonus, comes with a pretty exhaustive list of reference data, citations, and contributors!
So, without further ado, here are the most pressing reasons I’ve voluntarily nerded myself out.
I want to see the mind of God.
It’s an old physics cliché: how Einstein claimed his motivation behind studying the inner workings of the universe was that he wanted to see the “mind of God.” Sounds pretty good to me. Before his day, people thought they were getting really close; Newton thought God’s brain was basically a clock, and all we had to do was locate all the gears and screws, put them into action, and watch everything unfold according to plan. Sweet, sweet naiveté. Nowadays, things seem not so clear cut. Some people still agree with Newton in spirit, and believe all we’re missing is a few details here and there before we can complete the ultimate blueprint. Other people think little vibrating strings are the answer, having concocted magnificently elegant mathematical evidence to support their claim. They’re only missing any physical evidence – or even a way to obtain physical evidence. Conundrum. Still others think that all of space is a continuum of really small nodes that loop, spin, and join together to form the smallest bits of everything. But that seems pretty patchy for God, no? And what was he doing at the very beginning, just before setting all these tiny things in motion? And why do I get the feeling that when we die, we’re all going straight to remedial physics?
I want to know if there actually is a god.
…In which case I better not ask Richard Dawkins. In all seriousness, I’m hard pressed to find scientists racing to find an answer to this question; rather, the “question” is generally either viewed as being outside the realm of what science is supposed to do, or has apparently already been answered (with a resounding “probably not”). I must also confess that I find this answer not terribly hard to believe, though am nevertheless disheartened slightly by recent spats between devout creationists (for whose side Dawkins is no minor thorn) and those who believe there are things that science simply can’t explain – such as, say, the beginning and end of everything. Every week, there are fresh newspaper columns devoted to “intelligent design,” reporting the arguments, court victories, and various Christian think tanks looking for ways to back up its claims, and though the debate seems to me morally biased on both sides, I still secretly hope for some magical piece of evidence that convinces everyone who or what is in charge. As usual, the burden of proof is on science: today, we have a decent idea of what the universe was like seconds after it began (assuming it actually had a beginning – ugh, I feel another debate coming on), but that pesky beginning, those damned initial conditions are beyond the grasp of what anyone can see or measure. And even if we could measure, how to tell why the universe had to happen in the first place? It’s enough to drive a man to pray.
I also want to know if there is a “me.”
Forgetting a god for just a second, I’ll focus on something a lot more important: me. It’s not that I’m an egotist, you understand. In fact, according to a few philosophers, some neuropsychologists, and a whole bunch of Buddhists, there is no ego. Good news for all the selfish assholes of the world, but where does that leave the rest of “us”? Partly, it puts us in the always fascinating world of the brain, with all its axons, neurons, and dendrites acting as the most complicated system of pulsating pods and tunnels anyone could ever imagine – which, if you tried, would mean you’d be imagining yourself. Lucky for us, the representing of oneself is exactly the kind of trick our brains are good at (or I think, therefore I am). However, what about everyone else? Is it not true that we’re defined by our actions, which in turn are results of things happening around us, by laws and customs and the various facets of sociological behavior? And is it not true that no matter what we might believe is going on in our brains, our opinions about it are completely dependent on the opinions of other brains, each physically disconnected from the others but linked by an invisible web of experience and information? I think so, but I’m not sure. Therefore, perhaps I’m not.
I want to help. Really.
It turns out the best way to jumpstart an ecosystem is to blow up a nuclear reactor. Twenty years after most of the townspeople in Chernobyl left for fear of radiation contamination, I hear it’s making a comeback. Plant life is booming, a certain kind of wolf rare everywhere else in the region is plentiful there, and once asexual worms are getting it on with each other in the name of filling up the ground with baby wormlings while there aren’t any people to stomp on it. Of course, thousands of human cancer cases have been linked to the disaster, and nobody really knows the long-term consequences of the radiation on wildlife, but you’ve got to hand it to Mother Earth for giving it a go when nobody else could -- even when she’s got a fever from factory smoke, aerosols, and those pesky solar flares spewing still more radiation at her face; even when her oils and fish and clean water are being used and abused to the point of war, mercury poisoning, and gross smelling coastlines respectively. Isn’t there a way to work with this planet instead of against it, to put something back into the ground that birthed us all before we have to colonize Mars and Al Gore stars in another preachy movie? Cannot science provide for the most efficient, effective way of cleaning up the mess? Please tell me what to do before I start putting faith into politics.
I just want my computer to work.
I read today of the grossly inefficient use of energy in internet data servers. Apparently, every time I download that hilarious YouTube video, the equivalent of 12 horses are crushed with fiery coal. Or wait, maybe that’s just the video I was downloading. In any case, I have my reasons to suspect I’m not getting everything I could out of my computer. It all started when I read about quantum computing a few years ago, the notion that instead of using “bits” as the basic unit of digital data, we might try things called “qubits” (get it?). Unlike bits, which either hold a “1” or “0”, qubits could hold both at the same time, taking advantage of the quantum physics state of superposition of nuclear particles, and giving us the power to do a lot more things in a lot less time. Hackers are already lining up to cash in on your bank account, as decoding passwords would become drastically easier. However, so would solving those pesky differential equations that have kept theoretical physicists from being able to model complex quantum systems. We don’t have any quantum computers yet, but I have faith in the idea: if I have to live in a world where hackers are buying smoking paraphernalia with the CIA’s expense account, at least I’ll get to be God for 32 universes on my desktop.
I just gotta know what makes me tick.
In times of stress and insecurity, I can think of no greater pastime than validating oneself through superficial analysis. Luckily, there is no shortage of testing devices, both online and off, to help me know what I like and who I really am. According to Myers-Briggs, I am an INFJ (or sometimes an INFP). I have an IQ of somewhere between 130 and 140. Taking my age, exercise frequency, and body-mass index into account, I have about 35 years left to live. Because of my family history, I have a decent chance of getting diabetes, and an even better chance of needing a comb-over some time in the not-too-distant future. I experience synesthesia with colors (grapheme), which isn’t surprising, as my mother has a similar feeling for numbers. And as fascinating as all of this must be to you, neuroscience and Turing tests suggest that conscious insight into, well, one’s consciousness (meta-metacognition?) is a losing game. My brain, despite having very nicely arranged hemispheres, and appearing to emphasize certain regions for, say, fear, and others for, say, music appreciation, isn’t the kind of organ for which knowing a basic roadmap ever reveals exactly the way you got from mental or emotional point A to B. If that isn’t bad enough, both genetics and sociology seem to suggest that all my thoughts, dreams, and fears are to no small extent predetermined, one from the inside, the other from the out. But I can’t fret about that right now, because I need to take a test that’ll tell me which Beatles song I am.
I want to go to Jupiter, tomorrow if possible.
Space tourism is here. Sure, only the select-est of the select billionaires can afford it now, but pretty soon, we’ll all have stories of “our first time,” anti-gravity sickness, and how lame the moon looks up close. Unfortunately, while half the fun might be getting there, most of the trouble is as well. Currently, the race is on to develop a way of escaping the Earth’s atmosphere that doesn’t involve blasting off. The most promising is (don’t laugh) a “space elevator,” wherein passengers would ride up a tethered chord held in place by a weighty satellite in geo-synchronous orbit with our soon-to-be-yesterday’s-news planet. However, there is the matter of developing a chord that can withstand the pull of the satellite, and all the up-and-down traffic. And how exactly does one maintain a chord that’s five or ten miles up? As it happens there is an open competition to figure all of this out, but for now, I’ll have to wait until that first Litmus $20-million check clears before I can even think about shopping for moon boots.
I want to be thin!
Live to eat. Eat to live. Live to eat. EAT TO LIVE. What in Atkin’s name am I supposed to do with myself? After 30+ years of doing (admittedly loosely) what I thought I was supposed to do, it’s becoming clear that the only real shot I have at becoming a Greek god is to eat moderately and exercise regularly. And that’s completely boring and hard. Most frustrating is that science really hasn’t come to the rescue like I thought it would: drugs like ephedrine and synephrine might help me burn fat, but also help me vomit more and have strokes. Surgical procedures such as liposuction or vertical banded gastroplasty (“stomach stapling”) will definitely help me take off extra pounds, but a) I’m not actually overweight enough for any doctor to recommend them, and b) I don’t have several thousand dollars to spare. I can’t even live in my nicely climate controlled apartment without having to worry that I’m teaching my body not to regulate its own temperature, missing a chance to burn a few extra calories in the process. There are hints of a future where fat-burning steroids (such as one tested by the Salk Institute that works on the PPARd gene, controlling cellular ability to burn calories), and considering the number of overweight and clinically obese in America, my bet is that there will one day be a chemical solution for keeping trim. Nevertheless, I’m pissed at science: when I could be staring at the sunset and eating many, many pies, I’m wasting whole afternoons exercising.
I want to pass on my glorious genes.
It’s not that I don’t understand how this is done, mind you (though I apparently have a bad habit of choosing people who aren’t in any hurry to do it). Rather, considering my sister’s diabetes, my uncle’s mental impairment, and my other uncle’s, er, baldness, I wonder if there is a way of making sure whatever combination of genes my offspring inherit don’t include the ones liable to hinder their progress through life. Genetic engineering is starting to give me options unheard of only twenty years ago, and to many, still kind of unthinkable. As of today, we have the ability to screen embryos for known genetic disorders, and can even choose the sex of our babies by sorting chromosome carriers in sperm. The promise of the science is that one day, people will literally be able to make babies to order, right down to eye color, musical ability, or webbed feet -- not that I’m in a hurry to raise frog people. In fact, the notion of “designer babies” feels intuitively off-putting to me, all the while seeming like a perfect solution to everything that ails us. Richard Feynman once wrote about science, “there is no authority who decides what is a good idea,” which seems the other side of the coin from Jeff Goldblum’s caveat in Jurassic Park: “You were so busy trying to see if you could do it that you didn't stop to think about whether you should.” And for now, I’m undecided. Except about the baldness, that definitely sucks.
The continual formulation of new ideas, tests, and revisions therein guarantees that no matter my interests in science, it will move on, and notions of “truth” about all the points above will change long after I’ll benefit from them. Ultimately, that may be why science is intuitively (quick, before a neuroscientist and a sociologist double-debunk intuition!) more appealing to me than any particular belief system or philosophy. Adaptation is just a part of the deal, and rather than despair in the notion I’ll probably never know what’s really going on, there is some solace in the knowledge that scientists will never stop trying to find out.