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Rediscovery
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Humans are born naturally curious creatures. As youngsters, our world is mainly governed by what's within reach - or even better - fits in our mouths. For most of us, that changes as bigger folks start telling us to stop playing in the mud, eating crayons, and picking up beetles. But I've yet to encounter a first grader who's not fascinated by science - just not necessarily aware of it. Bring up dinosaurs around most six year olds and they'll be captivated in moments. 'You mean ginormous ancestors of birds lived here? REALLY?!' Heck, two decades later, even I'm still mesmerized!
Science provides us the opportunity to ask why, to understand the world, and to figure out how things came to be the way they are. It beckons our imagination to run wild and encourages new ideas. It's real and so alluring because many aspects of the field lie somewhere between wonder and exploration. Science remains the closest thing we have to actual magic beyond Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Now when I was a young girl, I'm positive I wasn't labeling my curiosity as science - I had to maintain my Reebok Pump wearing, New Kids on the Block listening (gosh, I hope readers click on that), radical exterior of the late 80s - but I sure knew I liked planets and Mr. Wizard and whales and insects and everything under the sun and beyond... And I had a blast puzzling the big people with questions like, 'If the universe is infinite but always expanding, what is it expanding into?' and 'What's beyond space?' (I still want to find out so readers, please share your ideas in comments). I realized since adults couldn't tell me, there must be something to all this science stuff.
Today, I've come a long way and proudly embrace my inner geek. I openly acknowledge science is the greatest frontier and always want to be involved figuring it out. One small piece of the great big puzzle that we're all part of no matter what the scale. Too often, our innate drive for discovery is cast aside somewhere along the journey to adulthood, but I fear if we lose that, life may become terribly monotonous. So instead, celebrate having the freedom to explore, to ask questions, and to reawaken this natural curiosity we had from the beginning. And may we never lose our sense of wonder.
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October 10, 2007 2:00 PM
Linda
A natural curiosity, a keen intellect, a sense of continuous wonder... that makes you a very special person. I would venture to say it also makes your writings always interesting.
October 10, 2007 4:47 PM
cvj
Hi Sheril,
I can help a bit with one of the questions... When we say that the universe is expanding, we're talking about not just the matter and energy in the universe expanding as though in some big box... no, we mean that the space itself is expanding. So there is no beyond... beyond is being created in the expansion as well, in a sense.
To be a tad more technical about it - the space stuff takes up can be defined intrinsically, without reference to a bigger space to put things into. Imagine a tabletop which goes on forever in all directions - an infinite surface with no edges. Now mark little grid points making a squared pattern (like graph paper) with the separation being 1 meter apart. What would it mean to be twice the size after a while? Well the square pattern now has marks ever two meters, instead of every one meter. It has expanded. I did not need to have something for it to "expand into" in order to make sense of that expansion. This is the way it is with our universe. The points are, roughly, galaxies and clusters of galaxies, for example.
Best,
-cvj
October 10, 2007 9:03 PM
Michael Blix
Science is so much more than a simple technical undertaking. But it is a more general loss of the boundless curiosity and discovery, the Ur-science if you will, that so often accompanies growing up. It's a shame and quite unnecessary. I hope this changes. However, I'm glad that it has survived in me, and you, and a relatively few others.
As to those literally universal questions, they are mainly the same problem. It's one of philosophical concepts. The universe is 'defined' as everything that there is, so by definition there can be nothing beyond space (if something 'new' was discovered like a parallel or alternate universe or that there exist multiple 'universes' they would really be a part of the one and only universe.) Can you tell me a thought that is not possible to think?
October 11, 2007 7:42 AM
definedfury
ah yes all that wonderful knowledge most of our feeble minds aquire yet somehow out among the blades of grass it becomes little of importance to beings lesser evolved than ourselves
we find it intellectually stimulating to gaze at our navels as one lecturer was amused about that we are all that is known and nothing can be known because all that is is also all that is not known and so on ect - this was relating to parmenides
so we have found our history of well.. nearly everything!
yet so many of our peers sitting in a room of 6.2billion dont even have the faintest beaming light hovering over their heads when it comes down to much of the meaning to any of it.. really
those of us or you or we out there that do find the pursuit of knowledge and understanding worth the effort required to gain then propel us to another place away from those that continue to degrade and segment our reality into subdivisions of ethereal supernatural praise
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