Science: The unnatural way of studying the natural world

“The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory when the brain was evolving.”

― Edward O. Wilson "Father of Sociobiology," Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Wait. Don't leave yet. Before you get too riled up, this is not a post belittling religion or religious practices. Instead it's about science and how it came to be. This is the ConservAsianist and let's start by talking about the human brain.

The human brain is an amazing organ. This roughly 3lbs mass of pink, easily-bruised, spongey matter that lives in your head-hole (this is a new science term for skull. I'm coining it) is responsible for what makes you...well, you! At its most complex it has led to amazing breakthroughs in the boundaries of art, knowledge, and expression. I mean seriously, you can't tell me that the person who thought of fried chicken was not anything less than a genius...

Am I trending yet?

It runs our body functions but also helps us take in all this information: noise, smell, taste, touch, sight, and creates patterns to help organize what you are hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and seeing. By organizing what you are regularly exposed to, it makes your environment feel a little less chaotic and overstimulating into something a little more familiar and in a way, comforting. Ultimately, the brain is your tool in how you interpret the world around you.

This doesn't mean, however, that the brain is not without its flaws. Let's consider the following: a prehistoric person is witnessing a lightning storm and it just so happens that every time they cough, it seems like lightning bolts strike closer and closer to them. They see the destruction the impact causes so the person then draws the conclusion that some unknown destructive force really dislikes coughing and they swear to protect people by spreading this knowledge. This clearly isn't how lightning works but how is a prehistoric person supposed to interpret this without any framework on weather systems? Which brings us to the quote above. The human brain is both simple and complex; it has evolved to take in complex information and simplify it for us to understand but it does not mean that science is a natural thought process to come up with all on your own.

"But ConservAsianist, didn't humanity create science?" you might ask, hoping to catch me with my foot in my mouth. Ha-ha!

The joke is on you because I think feet are disgusting and would never let that happen!

Yes, you are right science was indeed created by humanity, and it's important to realize what science actually is. It is not a belief, it is a methodology. It is a tool that humanity has collectively created and refined to help define and understand the world we live in. The reason it has such merit, is not because many people "believe in it," but because it is constantly getting tested and refined.

Try to think of humanity's collective knowledge 2000 years ago as a lump of iron. Since then, through generations and generations of scientists working together, we are slowly turning that lump of iron into steel. Where we are on that process, I cannot say because we may never know everything there is to know about the world, but today modern scientists are pushing the boundaries of human understanding while utilizing the collective knowledge of hundreds of thousands of scientists before them. Without having this past framework of science established, our understanding of the world would be very different from what it is today.

That is why modern science, scientific thinking, and the scientific method has to be taught. 2000 years ago, science consisted of thinking that an unknown mythological being was controlling the weather. Today, through careful study and asking the right questions, we know how it all mostly works. It is a collective endeavor and the reason it persists is because it is testable. Science is a way of thinking and it is something we can ALL do.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Up Next: How do we actually do science? If only there were some kind of...method...