Knocking on Heaven's Door - Lisa Randall [196]
I’ve also presented speculations about some even more difficult-to-test ideas. Though they expand the imagination and might eventually connect to reality, they could also remain in the domain of philosophy or religion. Science won’t disprove the landscape of multiple universes—or God for that matter—but it’s unlikely to verify them either. Even so, some aspects of the multiverse—such as those that could explain the hierarchy—do have testable consequences. It’s up to scientists to ferret these out.
The other major element of Knocking on Heaven’s Door has been the concepts—such as scale, uncertainty, creativity, and rational critical reasoning—that inform scientific thought. We can believe that science will make progress toward reaching answers and that complexity can emerge over time even before we have a fully fleshed-out explanation. The answers might be complicated, but that doesn’t justify abdicating faith in reason.
Understanding nature, life, and the universe poses extraordinarily difficult problems. We all would like to better understand who we are, where we came from, and where we are going—and to focus on things larger than ourselves and more permanent than the latest gadget or fashion. It’s easy to see why some turn to religion for explanations. Without the facts and the inspired interpretations that demonstrated surprising connections, the answers scientists have arrived at so far would have been extremely difficult to guess. People who think scientifically advance our knowledge of the world. The challenge is to understand as much as we can, and curiosity—unconstrained by dogma—is what is required.
The line between legitimate inquiry and arrogance might be an issue for some, but ultimately critical scientific thinking is the only reliable way to answer questions about the makeup of the universe. Extremist anti-intellectual strands in some current religious movements are at odds with traditional Christian heritage—not to mention progress and science—but fortunately they don’t represent all religious or intellectual perspectives. Many ways of thinking—even religious ones—incorporate challenges to existing paradigms and allow for the evolution of ideas. Progress for each of us involves replacing wrong ideas and building on the ones that are right.
I appreciated the sentiment when at a recent lecture, Bruce Alberts, former president of the National Academy of Sciences and current editor in chief of Science magazine, highlighted the need for the creativity, rationality, openness, and tolerance that are inherent to science—the robust combination of qualities that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, called “the scientific temper.”77 Scientific ways of thinking are critical in today’s world, providing essential tools for dealing with many tough issues—social, practical, and political. I’d like to close with a few further reflections about the relevance of science and scientific thinking.
Some of today’s complex challenges might be addressed with a combination of technology, information about large populations, and raw computing power. But many major advances—scientific or otherwise—simply require a lot of thought by isolated or small groups of inspired individuals working on hard problems for a long time. Although this book has focused on the nature and value of basic science, pure, curiosity-driven research has—along with advancing science itself—led to technological breakthroughs that have completely changed the way we live. In addition to giving us important ways of thinking about hard problems, basic science can lead to technological tools today that—when combined with more scientific thinking that absorbs the creativity and principles we’ve discussed—will help find solutions tomorrow.
The question now is how to address bigger questions in that context. How do we take technology beyond mere short-term goals? Even in a world