Monday, July 18, 2011
I'm rereading the book and I can't help wondering at how far we've come in about 400 years...from observing natural phenomenon to figuring out the mathematic "truths" to applying these truths to fly, to cure, to build. Two themes strike me: how the early scientists were naturally curious about everything they saw and experienced and how persistent they were in trying for years to figure things out. I try to imagine myself back in time observing but not actually understanding the things that we take for granted now...atomic theory for instance. We haven't even gotten to Dalton yet. I wonder if nowadays we are somehow stifling the curiosity of our young people. What are they wondering about? What are they going to discover in the future? Another thing that strikes me: the discussion about the "marriage" and "divorce" of science and religion. Do they have to be mutually exclusive? We're still having the same disagreements today...creationists vs. evolutionists....What do you think?
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3 comments:
I agree with you, because there are many things in the world that we ourselves would not notice. I wonder what makes the scientist so interested to try and figure out why somethings are or what they do. For instance, what made Faraday wonder about electricity and magnetism being closely related to make his laws and theories.
Every scientist had their unique way of finding their success in life. It also amazes me how determined each scientist is to accomplish the dreams in their lives. We are fortunate that there are people like these scientist that notice important things to connect back to the way that we live. =)
We could be stifling the curiosity of the young people, but just like all the scientists we read about, each person will take their own time to find that they really. And sometimes it is very simple things that spark ideas in the minds of these scientists, like the apple that fell down instead of up, in Newton's case for example. Science and religion has its place in each other but they cannot and should not be completely married, in my opinion. Because if they are, as we saw in the times of these scientists people tried to explain everything by the way of God, and if they had continued to do that we would have never come upon discoveries like gravity - we would still be believing that the tornadoes created by God held everything together. Also in Darwin's case, he was actually a very religious person, but he just said that if God did create us all, could it be that he created us all through evolution, and because people were so attached to religion that they could not even bother thinking about such a thing. What do you guys think?
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