Monday, January 17, 2005

Science and the Question Why?

Ever since my childhood, I have been learning more about the world in which I live in(?), and a lot of this has been attributed to Science. People say that Science has an answer to almost everything except of course a few of the "Unanswerable" questions put forth by religion.

My perception about science kept changing throughout the period of my life. First I thought science had an answer to so many questions that my mind raised. Then I felt, maybe there are questions which science did not answer. Then came the period when I thought science will surely find an answer to those questions that it did not answer. For now, sadly, I am in a stage when I feel science is not answering any of my questions :)

Let us consider the simplest of questions.

Why do objects fall down to the earth?

Science (or rather Newton) says : Gravity.

I feel that instead of giving an answer, all Newton has done is to associate a name to the phenomenon.

Next science goes on to explain how two objects of masses m1 and m2 attract each other with some particular force. But my question is "Why?"

Why should they not repel each other? Why are they attracted if they are close by? Why does the atraction depend on mass of the bodies?

While science has managed to give a "Name" to most of the phenomenon, it has failed (rather miserably) at explaining "Why" things should happen the way they do.

Science instead of finding out why the "Divine Rule Book" is the way it is, is rather finding "What is written in the Divine Rule Book"

Perhaps some more time is needed before science starts answering that. Till then, let me wait until science figures out atleast "What is written in the Divine Rule Book" completely.

1 comment:

Whoiscb said...

I would say it is "How" and not "Why". Science does explain "How a lot of things happen", like the example I just gavem but not why that happens.

I do agree that it is ambitious. But my claim that science is yet to start answering the question "Why" still stands.