My Relationship With Science (Thus Far)
My experiences with science began when I was very young. I began to notice that whenever I would fall down, I would experience a certain sensation. I did not know what this sensation was, but I felt an intense desire to never experience it again, much like certain musical productions. I would later learn that in English this sensation was called “pain” and the musical in question was called “Cats.”
Falling was not an uncommon occurrence. I noticed that the pain I associated with a fall was not always constant. There were times when I would wish for it to never happen again more than others. This would change depending on what kind of surface I fell upon. Falling on a gravel path would yield a grating, stinging pain, falling on a concrete sidewalk would provoke a heavy, numbing pain, and falling onto a bed would cause almost no pain at all unless one of my brothers was already asleep in it. I had struggled to put this into the words I was still learning. I eventually concluded that some things were not other things but that they were all interacting somehow. Sadly, before I could get much farther I was snatched up by my parents, taken to a building with stained glass and vaulted ceilings and dunked into cold water while a man in a dress prayed over me.
I had already considered myself pretty confused and once I began attending Catholic religious services my situation only worsened. Or so I thought. The silver lining to the ominous, sinful cloud was that Catholicism was quite progressive in scientific thought compared to many other religions. Despite its strict dogmas, there were surprisingly few outright refutations of the methodological processes that governed natural systems. When flagrant violations of natural laws did occur, they were labeled as miracles and not to be included in the study of a discipline such as physics that might argue against the possibility of a man walking on water. The Law of the Conservation of Matter must also be brushed into the corner for a bit when imagining feeding four hundred people with only two fish and five loaves of bread.
Despite the occasional miracle, science was not the enemy of the Catholic Church. My philosophical inquiries would receive quite a bit of flak, but my interest in causality and a system that allowed human beings to have actual knowledge (however infinitesimal and faulty when compared with the Lord Our God,) was not stifled outright. I like to imagine that I was a strong-willed child, really very much like a little mule in a Lacoste polo shirt. Growing up in an environment where I was free to explore science and faith was an excellent place to be from either standpoint.
Today, as a student and as a citizen of the United States, I use the scientific method to guide my understanding of the world. The information I receive that does not come directly from my own observation must be testable. I do not completely disregard the possibility of untestable information being true, but I believe my time in this state of consciousness to be limited and I do not wish to spend the brunt of it chasing after knowledge I can, by definition, never achieve whilst I am alive. If I am limited in the understanding of the world by my own brain, so be it. I gotta do what I can with what I got.
I believe that by adopting this thought process I contribute and protect the democratic system we have adopted. Scientific innovation is increasing exponentially as new discoveries lead to new technologies which make even more discovery possible. With the world virtually connected through the internet, the potential now exists for the greatest minds to share and critically examine existing information. The trend seems to be that the world is becoming more connected and more interdependent. Or rather, the human race is beginning to realize how interdependent we have been all along. How does this flood of new technologies affect the democracy of the United States? If it becomes the case that stem cell research is advanced to the point where it actually becomes therapy (which is considerably farther off than is often publicized) people could have access to treatments of diseases ranging from heart disease to spinal injuries to rebuilding the neural pathways of the brain itself. That is, people that can afford these therapies. One of the dearest tenets of this country is that “all men are created equal.” If scientific advances determine that this is no longer the case as certain groups of people become healthier than others, smarter than others, perhaps even reaching the point where they are so biologically different that they can no longer reproduce with other people. How could a democracy function? I’m not certain myself, but I am determined to educate myself in preparation for the problems of the future and I will be arrogant enough to assume that they can be overcome with the application of testable knowledge.
