I've often been asked by a variety of
people why I have chosen to study science, namely Astrophysics, of all
things. It is a difficult question to answer truthfully, as the idea is
not simple to explain in casual conversation. However, in an attempt
to figure this out for myself on a flight yesterday, I came up with an
analogy which explains all the facets of science and what it means to
study it to a tee.
Imagine a Jigsaw puzzle. This puzzle is unlike any other that has
ever existed, if only in the sense that it is being built to discover
what the picture on the box is. Mankind has been building this puzzle
since its inception onto the Earth, and it is difficult to say with any
sort of certainty anything of its progress except that we have more of
the picture now than we did then. The puzzle, from what we have
gathered so far, is massive, with what parts we have of the frame
measuring thousands of miles in each direction and pieces as small as
coins. And we don't even know where all the pieces are.
The puzzle, of course, is knowledge. The pieces are those little
papers and studies that are published every year by scientists. They're
all the little discoveries. Scientists are people who devote their
lives to seeking out the pieces and trying to fit them in to what parts
of the puzzle we already have. And the pictures we have already
formed are magnificent. We have small segments of the large picture
that show us how rain works, and how life carries out its functions. We
have other pictures showing us how things we can't even see affect
other things, and we're even inching closer to a clear picture on how
the universe began. But we're still far from the big picture.
How about the study of sciences? Throughout grade school, children
are informed about the great puzzle of science and they are even shown a
few pieces here and there. However, every once in a while a
particularly good teacher will show a few seemingly unrelated pieces to
students and show them how they fit together, sowing the seeds for
future scientists. In college, those of us who have decided that
searching for pieces of the puzzle is a worthwhile endeavor are divided
into groups. After all, the puzzle is far too large already for any
single person to see it all and help on all sides. There are pieces
hidden within the Earth that Geologists and Geophysicists look for, and
pieces hidden in tiny particle interactions that Chemists look for.
Pieces in life forms that Biologists tend to and pieces in space that
Astronomers look for and pieces in the many facets of the fabric of
reality that Physicists and Mathematicians search for. And once you
choose where you want to look, you take years to first see all the
pieces that have already been found. Once you're done and you've seen
all that has been done in an area, you may contribute to it yourself.
And, of course, given the gravity of a task that assembling all of
knowledge is, there is no room for error. Whenever someone finds a
piece, every scientist flocks around to make sure that it fits into the
puzzle just like they say it does. And if it doesn't, it's removed or
replaced. Sometimes this happens quickly, as with the recent claim of
arsenic-based life, and sometimes it can take quite a while longer, as
with the piece that Newton put in place that looked fine for centuries
until Einstein put a better piece in its place. Some pieces are placed
in the puzzle right when they are found, like Darwin's little piece
which fit snugly into a biological segment and giving many other pieces a
home, while others are found but seem to have no clear place or only a
couple of attachments, like the recently discovered facts that electrons
are the closest things to mathematically perfect spheres in existence.
And this is where the joy of looking for the puzzle pieces resides.
It's putting together the blueprints for the universe and seeing how
everything is interconnected. It's learning something totally new and
paving the way for so many other puzzle pieces to be placed. Finding a
new piece that ties things neatly together or a piece that shows
something previously thought impossible is actually possible is the joy
of science. Helping complete the puzzle of knowledge is the most
satisfying endeavor one can undertake. However, it is also in many ways
the saddest.
Scientists do not fear death in the way that other people do. They
do not fear dying per se, they simply regret not being able to live
forever. Because the woe of the scientist, the true, merciless,
unforgiving truth, is knowing that no matter how long you live, and no
matter how many pieces of the puzzle you place, you will never see the
picture on the box. And that is a terrible thing indeed.
