To deal with “arrogant” scientists we need to move beyond reductionism and break the “Galilean Spell.”

I don't want no god on my lawn Just a flower I can help along 'Cause the soul of no body knows how a flower grows... Oh how a flower grows . . .

“Longer Boats,” by Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam).

Why are so many religious people uncomfortable with so many scientists? I can think of several reasons. According to many Believers, scientists are arrogant know-it-alls. Believers see scientists as emotionally sterile lab-dwellers who flaunt their white coats and their fancy lab equipment. Scientists exacerbate the situation by speaking and writing using esoteric language that makes science-phobes feel ignorant. By using such difficult concepts and language, scientists have raised the bar, which excludes many folks from joining scientific discussions. It’s not like the “good old days,” where people were generally informed enough to join many conversations regarding science (or social science). Things are different now.

Continue ReadingTo deal with “arrogant” scientists we need to move beyond reductionism and break the “Galilean Spell.”

Beautiful self-organized pattern: the huge hexagon at Saturn’s north pole

Take a look at this beautiful movie image of Saturn taken by NASA:

This nighttime movie of the depths of the north pole of Saturn taken by the visual infrared mapping spectrometer onboard NASA’s Cassini Orbiter reveals a dynamic, active planet lurking underneath the ubiquitous cover of upper-level hazes. The defining feature of Saturn’s north polar regions–the six-sided hexagon feature–is clearly visible in the image.

“Who built that hexagon on top of Saturn?” one might ask.  No one built it.  It’s a self-organized pattern.  And the area of the hexagon is large enough to fit four earths.

This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides,” said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We’ve never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn’s thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you’d expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is.

But this striking pattern is merely one of the huge numbers of beautiful self-organized patterns one can find in our universe.  In Dynamic Patterns: the Self Organization of Brain and Behavior (1997), J. A. Scott Kelso describes the mysterious-seeming emergence of such dynamic patterns:

Patterns in general emerge in a self-organized fashion, without any agent-like entity ordering the elements, telling them when and where to go . . . [S]ystems that are pumped

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Continue ReadingBeautiful self-organized pattern: the huge hexagon at Saturn’s north pole