Kevin Vranes has a phud in Physical Ocean- ography and Cli- matology. He now studies sci- ence policy and politics at the SB question of the Week: "If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?"
My answer:
The simultaneously incomprehensible vastness of our universe and the scale-independence of physical phenomena. In other words, that nature is simultaneously so different and so much the same across its myriad phenomena.
I've been musing on the scale of our place in the universe since I was a kid. That it takes millions of years for light to travel from galaxies visible in the night sky -- that in that time alone civilizations could have arisen and been extinguished on distant planets. That despite this incomprehensible distance, the atoms comprising those worlds are the same as the atoms comprising us. That despite the enormity of scale difference between atom, human, planet, galaxy and universe, physical processes often appear to work identically. That if I show you two photographs of folds in a metamorphic rock, one taken from space of a formation thousands of kilometers in length and the other of a rock that would fit in the palm of your hand, you would not be able to tell them apart. That in the vastness of time in the universe, nature has the opportunity to try all combinations and find the ones that become self-organizing and self-sustaining.
Comments
# 1 | razib | May 19, 2006 7:01 PM
excellent answer :) i'm a 'scale independence' guy in evolutionary biology.
# 2 | jw | May 19, 2006 8:38 PM
Ironically, my physics career has been all about taking advantage of how physical processes work differently at different scales. I want people to know how the universe behaves differently at different scales, to understand the difference between classical and quantum physics, but also to see the smaller differences: how gravitation dominates galactic scales, the balance of gravity and nuclear fusion cntrolling stellar lifetimes, why insects can walk on water, the secondary electromagnetic effects that produce all of chemistry, the secondary strong effects that produce stable and unstable nuclei, and finally how the direct strong force binds quarks inside nucleons.
I think much of the public's rejection of cosmology and evolution has to do with their lack of understanding of how differently physics works at different scales. Part of the reason the 747 being created by a tornado is so absurd is that the parts wouldn't stick together, but at cellular scales, complex secondary electromagnetic forces produce a wide variety of sticky behaviors. They don't have a mental model of how molecules interact on small scales and so tend to think of DNA as blueprints.
# 3 | Joe Shelby | May 19, 2006 10:11 PM
My answer (one of the few times I felt the question worth answering in my own blog):
My answer is quite simple: "Common Sense" is wrong when it comes to scientific facts and theories. Nothing in science is obvious, or we wouldn't need science if the first place.
Gravity as "32 feet per second" is obvious (though it took quite a while to confirm it). However, Gravity as a *mutual* attraction, implying that you are pulling the earth with exactly the same force tha the earth is pulling you with (and merely the fact that its more massive is why it accelerates far less than you do), THAT is not obvious, and nothing about it could be in any way something anybody with "common sense" would ever come up with.
The idea that as you move, relative to something else, your clock (time itself) moves differently utterly violates any idea of "common sense", but our entire GPS satellite system is accurate to within 30 feet because of that essential, nonsensical scientific truth.
Even when you know "most" of the properties of an atom, it can fool you. If the inert gases are supposed to be essentially "complete", meaning they don't form other molecules, then why is Radon such a dangerous gas when it seeps into your home, potentially giving you cancer? What does it react to, because such a reaction seems to violate all common sense?
You can "think" about something forever, using "common sense" or otherwise, and you might even be right, but the truth is that reality is what matters, not thought. If you don't actually test it against the reality of the world as it is, the thought is meaningless. Nature has plenty more facts out there that will continue to violate "common sense", in the very small, the very big, and the very complex.
To convince yourself that any other part of science, be it geology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, and of course, biology, should simply be a matter of "common sense" is to deceive yourself. Scientists discover the facts they find and develop the theories they develop by using very _uncommon_ sense.
Would that it were more common than it is...
# 4 | Amphy | May 20, 2006 4:23 AM
Excellent choice.
And comments.
# 5 | Rob Knop | May 20, 2006 12:15 PM
That it takes millions of years for light to travel from galaxies visible in the night sky
...and those are just the galaxies that astronomers refer to as "local" and "nearby"....
-Rob
# 6 | kevin vranes | May 22, 2006 2:21 PM
good adds, jw and JS. JS - you're close to what I was going to write alternatively and my attitude behind choosing the "no se nada" appellation.