Science is a Gas Giant.
I don’t mean anything disparaging by that. It’s a mental model to freshen up our thinking.
The unequivocal territory of science is the sum of theories plus experiments that have unambiguous, replicable results. This body of knowledge is the diamond-hard core at the heart of science. There are a lot of physics and chemistry experiments here. They seem to know their parts by heart.
Just beyond the border of that core, the gas atmosphere begins but it is nearly as hard as the core itself. It’s a long, dense gradient from here to the wispy edge of the atmosphere that is literally made of thin clouds under scattered atoms and space. Close to the core, the experiments are as replicable as the day is long when you average them out. There are enough squishy, stochastic details here that any random experiment might say something new, but not useful. The ambiguous results are overwhelmed by un-ambiguous ones like a single black grain in a bag of white rice.*
Heading outward, the variables faced by theorists get more complicated and slippery. If the questions science aims to answer were pickle jars, we’d crack them open without a beat at the core, struggle with rubber gloves and screwdrivers around the middle, and create thought experiments about jars and pickles at the foggy upper edge. Your thought experiment may perfectly predict opening the jar, and what’s inside but it’ll be a long time before anyone gets a pickle.
There is an entire UNIVERSE of questions in need of answers outside this atmosphere. These are unscientific questions such as, are there orders of existence above this one, is there a god, is there any foundation to astrology, extrasensory perception, or life after death?
These pickle jars are literally unrecognizable as jars of pickles when dragged down into the atmosphere of the Scientific Gas Giant. The implications of unscientific questions are so far from detection or measure within the atmosphere that they are literally nonsense down there. They are all noise, no signal. Science reacts to these questions scornfully and answers unambiguously.
NO!
This is a bit like having a masseur go over your taxes or a policeman rate the quality of your dental work. You can do it, but why on earth would you? What scientists and new-age and religious believers should recognize above all is this:
The only possible response to an Un-Scientific Question is an Un-Scientific Answer.**
If you as a layman, doubt and question the diamond core of science, you’re opting for stupidity, because that shit is proven. Then there’s a long climb through that atmosphere where if you bet against the science you are going to lose. However, outside the atmosphere, no answer is scientific and every answer is unscientific. Most everything in life, especially stuff that truly matters, is outside the atmosphere. And that’s FINE! Inside the atmosphere good, outside good too!
Out here it comes down to style and passion. Cautious people, people afraid to be wrong, or thought silly, choose the Sciency Style©. It disparages and looks down on answers that come from outside the atmosphere even though the atmosphere can’t generate a relevant word about them. It isn’t science or even scientific, but it smells just like it. It’s a “grown-up” thing you wear like a headscarf or a tie, to fit in.
Thesis: Reality is allowed to have any, (and as many), details and causes as it wishes. We are allowed to speculate wildly about these.
Welcome to Crazy-Zoo!
How about we start speaking openly about the experiences of our hearts, minds, and souls. Forcing your life and words into sciency mode is no better than forcing them into fundamentalist religious mode. If you’re a “cards close to the chest” cautious person who hates ambiguity I’m not judging you. That’s the genuine version of you and that is what we need you to be.
If you censor yourself from a pro-social fear that some critical mass of idiots will hit their flashpoint and overrun the rest of us pushing their dumb ass beliefs, let me reassure you that happened LONG ago. This isn’t about that. This is about opening your horizons from their current cramped position. It’s about canalizing restricted freedom of thought. Remember, the flatness we’d be arguing in favor of isn’t supported by the scientific method, it’s just a posture.
Especially if you’ve censored yourself out of fear of judgement I want you to uncork the ocean of reality poetry inside you and let it flow. Crazy-Zoo is my “Might as well own it” name for the wide-open territory ahead where we say what we really think, (and even learn what we really think), in bold, colorful language without checking to see who approves.
We’ll soon revisit and explore Crazy-Zoo. Hope to see you there.
|* These black grains, by the way, are the life rafts clung to by those fighting against truth for pay or trollish perversity. Global warming and a spherical Earth, for two examples.
|** There is a scientifically correct answer: “I have no way of knowing”.
