Scientific thought: “To Doubt”

I am listening to the book "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" by Richard Feynman a notable physicist of the 20th century and one that I find very interesting because of his Philosophy concerning life and physics/science with his usual abstract and off the wall approach to life and physics.

First before this post will make sense to those of you reading who do not know who Feynman is, should know some background first. Feynman grew up during the 20’s and notably Great depression and he was a self study kid who learned much as a kid by taking things apart and putting them back together, also he and his dad spent a lot of time wondering outside looking and examining the physical world around him to understand it and the processes found in nature. So keeping that in mind.

Feynman’s view and approach to physics and more likely than not his definition of physics is this: “to take the universe apart and putting it back together, so that we may understand how the individual pieces work in order to understand how it all works as one.” Now those of you who know me understand why I like Feynman so much and his philosophy regarding science. But I like this definition of Physics because it is exactly what Physicists do! We explore how the universe works and why it works so well, the intricacies of Nature. Nature has no end, no possibility of ending (for another Blog…). The more we try to understand it the more we realize we know nothing about it because we learn the depth of our own ignorance! Science is systematic doubt of experts and their scientific discoveries; not what you were taught in grade school, I was not. We, Physicists (or Scientists in general) are taught to doubt those we deem “Experts” and our Professors who teach us the Physical Laws of Nature. This is because if you do not doubt the validity of science then the possibility of a better answer will never be considered! Take Einstein for example, he invalidated Newton’s Laws concerning gravity; yes, Newton’s laws work for the common man but they do not hold when taking the Universe apart.

Interesting what we call a college education… so when someone asks me what I “learned” in college; I will reply “to doubt!” This is a unsatisfactory answer but a fun one; Feynman also said something similar to this when questioned about his winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. Unfortunately this is why so many Scientists loose their Faith in God, they doubt so much that they doubt the fact that some things will always remain: A Mystery and unsolvable in a scientific manner.