Science is often accused of being reductionist in that it attempts to explain phenomena in terms of ever-tinier parts. Recently, complexity has also become a scientific player, assisting us to study those magic-seeming points at which tiny homogenous parts take on fascinating higher-order forms. Even equipped with this two-fold lens, though, science seems to be missing something. No one can meaningfully explain my Grandmother in terms of molecules, no matter how detailed the explanation.

Most of us don’t turn to science to be inspired (though I think we could and often should). There is a widespread prejudice that scientists are smug people lacking a sense of awe. Sometimes that’s true, but not always. Many of the greatest scientists were humble in the face of their work, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin being good examples. They weren’t at all like those know-it-all television Bible thumpers. I do admit, however, that some smug scientists commit this same sin. Whether they be scientists or Fundamentalists, people commit my version of mortal sin when they blaspheming deep mysteries by acting smugly.

But not all scientists are smug. Most of them know that they are working on only a few patches of a quilt that stretches further than the eye can see. They are humble because they realize that we are incredibly limited in what we can know. Though science continues to illuminate the dark corners of our world, it can never give us a “God’s eye view” of the universe or any part of it. Those tiny things eventually smear into waves and the big universe got there . . . HOW??? It’s ultimately opaque, no matter how far we end up pushing the horizons. No one really knows. That we’ve learned enough to make planes that really fly and medicines that cure deadly diseases doesn’t mean that we know how to ask meaningful ultimate questions.

Cat Steven wrote a song called “Longer Boats” in which he sang:

Cause the soul of no body knows
how a flower grows… Oh how a flower grows

I think this is fundamentally correct, no matter how well we analyze the flower’s chemical components, whether we correlate its growth with sunshine or whether we trace that plant’s phylogeny or ontogeny.

I think that this is also what Nietzsche meant when he wrote:

Just beyond experience!– Even great spirits have only their five fingers breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.
[from Daybreak, s. 564, R.J. Hollingdale trans.]

Good scientists know their limits, even though they must remind us that humans tend to notice coincidences way out of proportion to the far more numerous non-coincidences of our lives. Thus, no scientist currently has the tools to deny that the thing you might describe as “fate” somehow put you put you on this planet at this specific time for some very specific reasons. Stories like this endow our lives with meaning. We all weave these stories and we must do so. Our will to go on depends on these stories.

Scientists also know that no computer simulation can give you the same satisfaction you get when you look into the moist eyes of your beautiful daughters. They don’t pretend to really understand what life “means” to you, even as they continue to digest your world with their models and theories that are capable of quantifying, correlating and interweaving the effects of emotions, evolution, hormones, synaptic strength and social knowledge.

I doubt that those scientists will catch up to you during your lifetime. That should leave you plenty of room to continue to spin the compelling (and possibly true!) stories that allow you to make deep personal sense of those disparate and sometimes amazing events of your life.

e

ps.  May the Force be with you.