Crystal Gazing
Don’t reject the next sparkler of an idea that comes along just because it might rock your way of thinking
“If there is one thing that we have all been taught to fear, it is surely questions. There are some things, we learn early, that are never to be questioned. They simply are. They are absolute. They come out of a fountain of eternal truth. And they are true because someone said they are true. So we live with someone else’s answers for a long time.”
~Joan Chittister, Called to Question: a Spiritual Memoir , p. 2
“Mocked”, “insulted”, and “exiled” by his peers for his thoughts about crystals, Dan Shechtman at first glance would seem to be the victim of religious dogma police, but not so…
…the conformity police in this case were Shechtman’s fellow scientists, chemical colleagues, who tossed him out of his research group when he proposed a new crystalline chemical structure. “They said I brought shame on them,” he said. Instead, they brought shame upon themselves when Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery, one that has changed the way chemists consider solid matter, and which is being used to look at new materials with significant, high-potential application. The president of the American Chemical Society, Nancy B. Jackson, said Shechtman’s discovery was "one of these great scientific discoveries that go against the rules."
Let's think about that for a second. "One of these great scientific discoveries that go against the rules."
Scientific inquiry, which is hailed and rightly so, for its objective, data-driven process using the scientific method, is not immune to its own prejudices because all humans are subject to their own belief systems and their need to maintain their own position of, as Shechtman found, authority regarding knowledge. Thomas Kuhn popularized the constraints to open inquiry, and the rejection of unconventional ideas by insular group thinking – such as chemists or biologists, in his seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And the evidence is overwhelming that unconventional, irreverent scientists have been shunned by the establishment community for centuries. “People just laughed at me,” Shechtman said when recalling those times. So scientists, don’t reject the next sparkler of an idea that comes along just because it might rock your way of thinking – your scientific ideology. It might just be a precious stone.
We know throughout history thatheretical thoughts and actions can cause the religious “inquisitors” to come out toplay. These folks reinforce doctrine in such persuasive ways, not only for the flock per se , but also for scientificinquiry (see Galileo...). It’s to be expected in a world steeped in belief that some folks are just going to check to see if you’re in or you’reout, and if you’re out, well, to punish you. But scientific inquiry would seem to be immune to baser, less-analyticalimpulses to reject hypotheses with prejudice, and especially impervious torejecting the hypothesizer, with viciousness.
But not so…
The trick, in science as well as in religion, I think, is to consider beliefs or truths as provisional. That's certainly what science, at its best, does. I call these tentative theories "working assumptions" about the world. That allows us to operate in the world, but also allows us to be open to the mystery, the unknown, which lies far beyond the capacity of any human or even group of humans to conceive or perceive (see Dark Matter...). Then the folks like Shechtman, who suggests a new way of looking at the world, or Galileo or Jesus or Abraham Lincoln can share with us what we could never find or imagine or strive for on our own. Without being vilified, or worse, for it.
Let's all gaze at some crystals. Let's all look at the stars. Let's all step into a little mystery now and again, eh? Let's all imagine how resurrection and rebirth and restructuring and miracles and healing and magic (Obi Wan could open doors with "the force" but I can do it every time I walk into a store) could be possible. Could be, but not necessarily is. No need to fear uncertainty.
Uncertainty is where faith comes in.
“The main lesson that I have learned over time is that a good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that is sure 100 percent in what he reads in the textbooks.” ~Daniel Shechtman, 2011 Nobel Prize Recipient for Chemistry.
“The main lesson that I have learned over time is that a good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that is sure 100 percent in what he reads in the textbooks.” ~Daniel Shechtman, 2011 Nobel Prize Recipient for Chemistry.
References
Chittister, J. (2004). Called to question: a spiritual memoir
. Lanham, MD, Sheed & Ward.
Heller. A. (2011). Vindicated: Ridiculed Israeli scientist wins Nobel
, The Associated Press.
