There is a tremendous demand for mysteries which are frankly stupid. I wish this demand could be satisfied by scientific mysteries instead. But before we can live in that world, we have to undo the idea that what is scientific is not curiosity-material, that it is already marked as “understood”.
I think one of the biggest reasons for this is that most of us are satisficers when it comes to explanations of the world. An implication that some scientists know what is going on with a certain phenomenon and are not radically reinterpreting all their theories and designing flurries of experiments means essentially “This phenomenon does not need to radically disturb my map of understanding about the world”.
Suppose the answer to the elephant in the room is that God definitely exists and can overturn or modify physical “laws” at whim, and starting today, is willing to provide independently replicable external proof to any willing skeptical observer of that fact, -- this silvery-green elephant is the first salvo in the project.
Now if I know this I could certainly claim that “Somebody else understands why this elephant is here”, but it would be a pretty radical stretch to say “Science” even though in some sense, it would be. But when people say/imply that it was explainable by “science”, what I believe they mean is that it is explainable in terms that do not render the current common understandings of some major scientific field moot.
Now, in practice, all people’s internal maps of understanding are so severely limited that studying any deep scientific problem (solved or not, as long as they didn’t already understand it) would, in fact, radically change their understanding of the world, even if they were not learning anything in the process that scientists in the field don’t already know backwards and forwards. I’m a geek and read lots of science, so I’ve known all sorts of things about the effects of quantum mechanics on how I should understand the world since I was 14, but the moment when I finally got the math of the wave equation (after finally deciding to bang my head on the math as long as necessary) was nonetheless transformative.
So I agree with you completely. The fact that something is understood, if it was once a deep mystery, is no reason for anyone to treat it as trivial.
There is a tremendous demand for mysteries which are frankly stupid. I wish this demand could be satisfied by scientific mysteries instead. But before we can live in that world, we have to undo the idea that what is scientific is not curiosity-material, that it is already marked as “understood”.
I think one of the biggest reasons for this is that most of us are satisficers when it comes to explanations of the world. An implication that some scientists know what is going on with a certain phenomenon and are not radically reinterpreting all their theories and designing flurries of experiments means essentially “This phenomenon does not need to radically disturb my map of understanding about the world”.
Suppose the answer to the elephant in the room is that God definitely exists and can overturn or modify physical “laws” at whim, and starting today, is willing to provide independently replicable external proof to any willing skeptical observer of that fact, -- this silvery-green elephant is the first salvo in the project.
Now if I know this I could certainly claim that “Somebody else understands why this elephant is here”, but it would be a pretty radical stretch to say “Science” even though in some sense, it would be. But when people say/imply that it was explainable by “science”, what I believe they mean is that it is explainable in terms that do not render the current common understandings of some major scientific field moot.
Now, in practice, all people’s internal maps of understanding are so severely limited that studying any deep scientific problem (solved or not, as long as they didn’t already understand it) would, in fact, radically change their understanding of the world, even if they were not learning anything in the process that scientists in the field don’t already know backwards and forwards. I’m a geek and read lots of science, so I’ve known all sorts of things about the effects of quantum mechanics on how I should understand the world since I was 14, but the moment when I finally got the math of the wave equation (after finally deciding to bang my head on the math as long as necessary) was nonetheless transformative.
So I agree with you completely. The fact that something is understood, if it was once a deep mystery, is no reason for anyone to treat it as trivial.