The Science of Everything

It’s a fact that is at once weird and a bit obvious; think of anything, anything at all, that involves the human condition, and you have a name for it. The condition of being, I mean. And in terms of the world of science, of course, it’s very understandable- for anyone who aspires to cure cancer when they get older, you know what I mean. You can’t just grow up to cure cancer anymore; there are way too many people doing the same thing. No, to stand out and be different you have to specify. No truer does this ring true than in the world of science; there are just so many things to become expertly gifted at that each person is allowed to follow exactly the discipline you want. It’s always been a philosophy of mine, at least, to work in the name of this idea- if the dream career does not exist (which is growing less and less likely in this world of specialization), invent one that fits the bill. And this should be something that everyone does! Imagine having to live life confined to a certain category; it may not be something you like, but it’s what everyone else is doing. You have a good pay and you’re pretty much set for life, right? But what discoveries you would have made as an X-Y-Z-ologist, you don’t have the scope to do anymore. Invention and innovation comes from this type of thinking; our most lauded innovators are bred from the obscurity of profession or their ability to shun categorization altogether. The whole concept of self-specialization comes straight from the 16th century Renaissance; many of you must have heard the terms Renaissance man and Renaissance woman. These were the jack-of-all-trades, those who spent their weeks practicing all the professions they loved with no qualms. How else could Leonardo da Vinci produce a prototype of the modern helicopter and the Mona Lisa? Both were inspiring and conducive to the technology and art of today, which in a way defines popular culture. But Leo was not simply an artist or just an inventor or identifiable by any of the terms which define the skills he excelled at. No, instead he was just a man for the ages. A lot of people I know have convinced themselves pretty well that they can never be scientists or interested in science. And maybe they draw on this lack of interest from their experiences with the mundaneness of science classes and droning lectures about intangible physics or the various quarks in subatomic particles. But I guess nobody really defined “science” for them. It’s surprising that we have had such a variety of scientists who went without a title, or a name to their profession, but still think of science as such a narrow topic. Probably because everything is a science of something, a discipline, it’s so ambiguous what we want to be and it’s all too common to assume that we can’t do something just because it isn’t already established. That is the spirit of science, then- it is to be what we want and in doing so make the world a better place. We need to learn to love science for whatever reason, be it its ambiguity, its overextending reach into all the realms of discovery, its endless store of knowledge and unrivaled powerfulness. If anyone thinks that mankind has turned the light on to the rest of the world, let alone the cosmos, they’d be surprised to find that we’ve only just found the switch. Forget STEM and the educational push for science, even- learning to love the world around us and cultivating the desire to make out more of it is the real reason why science is so important to us. And as we grow as the human race, it is science that provides the force that allows us to turn the light on and step into an illuminated world. So find out what science is for you- bask in the light it provides, and that predisposition to the workings of a mysterious world will have appeal to you as it does to all the great thinkers who came before us. That’s the focus of this month- I hope we can all add some light into our ways of thinking as we define the future together.