Grad so durchstöber ich die Blogs, zu denen ich die letzten Tage nicht kam und was ich da bei badscience lese, möchte ich euch nicht vorenthalten, da es die Dinge gut trifft, wie ich finde 😉
The key mistake people make with science is to have expectations that are too broad. Science isn’t about love, or the meaning of life, and on both it will disappoint you. Science is, in fact, a branch of the entertainment industry.
When was the last time you saw an insect breathing, really close up? Amoeba in motion? When you stand on the heath, alone, do you find yourself remembering, from school, how plants move to follow the sun, how photosynthesis works, how stomata open and close, the reproductive strategies of plants, the sexual mixing, the purposes of the structures of a seed, of a flower?
People don’t believe in that stuff, in the way that they believe in a God: they like science. I don’t buy scientific explanations for real world phenomena just because I think they’re accurate, or because I think I can stand them up against the arguments of some wily creationist or social theorist in a squabble (I can, by the way).
People who like science usually just happen to think that the story it can tell us about the world is more interesting, more intricate, and more beautiful than anything anyone could make up and put in a holy book.
But look, this isn’t a fight, it’s Christmas. I don’t blame religion for wars, any more than I blame the Wright Brothers for carpet bombing or the Costa del Sol. I’m just not very interested in religion. Maybe if there was a religion that was invented after the enlightenment, after the invention of the microscope, the discovery of the atom, that incorporated a bit more of what we knew, it might have a bit more oomph.
But when you stand up “made in seven days” against the amazing findings of comparative anatomy, and everything that suggests about convergent and divergent evolution, the way that my hand is the same structure as a bat’s wing, the way that the green toed sloth has a symbiotic relationship with algae that provides it with green camouflage against a forest background, and more, I’m sorry, I know whose books I’m buying this Christmas.
From the moment we started to work out what was going on with the stars we realised that we weren’t the centre of attention in the universe, and the rules had to be rewritten. From a starting position of glorious pointlessness, we generate meaning for ourselves. You may not be the centre of the actual universe (you’re not, by the way) but maybe you can still be the centre of your girlfriend’s universe, or your kids’. And also, perhaps more importantly, even if you’re not important to the Milky Way, the Milky Way can still be important to you.
Ich wünsch euch ‘ne schöne Zeit zwischen den Jahren und viel Spaß beim Umtauschen 😛