Science Satisfies Curiosity

Not literally in all the sense, but this was how I felt in my younger school days. In the eleventh grade, the class was divided into science or art class. Every one in my family did science, so, the choice was easy for me. Growing up, I had access to numerous novels in a small library containing huge Chemistry and Biology textbooks.

Deep in my heart I loved arts: Government, Economics, and History classes as I stopped by to attend some of them anyway. The prospects of careers following art courses into the university also appealed to me. I was a budding musician then even if it were writing lyrics and rapping on instrumentals. I had been writing way before the music thing, but had not known by then I would take writing professionally even with all the handwritings on the wall. I would finish reading a novel when I was younger and wonder how the author wrote such story with complex plots from the first page to the end. Then, I had no idea stories were not written in a chronological order.

However, the primary reason for choosing physics and the like was that I wanted to learn how things got made, like how everything got to be whether occurring naturally or manufactured artificially. For all my artist tendencies, I couldn't bear ignoring my curiosity. Also, there was this belief in my school that the most intelligent ones went to science classes while the others went to art classes. Some kids who snuck into science classes where plucked out weeks later after results of few quizzes came out.

I wouldn’t say this approach is the best. Interest is a strong factor in choosing majors and ultimately the profession one loves over another at the tertiary level. Could better attention paid to the kids who wanted to be doctors, but struggled with chemistry at the onset help them or is school about fitting into age-old rigid systems and curriculum over individual progress? I don’t know, but at least that was how things were.

Science is a branch of knowledge that methodically studies something or provides solutions to some problem domain. What I enjoy about science is the infinite nature of what it attempts. Basically every idea holds a nugget of possibility until tested scientifically and either accepted as true or discarded. This process known as the scientific method could be cumbersome. Constructing all those equipment used in laboratories and research centers cost money and efforts, but the procedures follow a simple thought process against the convoluted mechanism of practicing law which many art students go after.

I ended up with a Bachelor degree in Agriculture for many reasons which also involved the scientific study and manipulation of reproduction, growth, and healthy sustenance. And for all the satisfaction science provided, I still have dreams of attending law school. There is no ceilings on what our minds can contain and what we can achieve. The accuracy of science helps save lives in the medical fields and birthed technology in engineering. It helps us understand basically that at 100° water will boil and depending on how you want it, you could have a tea, or enjoy a warm bath.

Science fiction. It turns out that knowledge of science and its procedures help me write better, an activity I classified under art because when the words hit, and the storyline pulsates your thinking faculty, a writer usually transcends their environment much like the painter who spends hours at their canvas cooking up wonder. And yet, the discipline of performing an informed research even for fiction writing is scientific. Using Speculative fiction for example, the mind is allowed to wander far and imagine wide. I love writing science fictions, albeit, what is known as soft science fiction against the hardcore where advanced knowledge of core science subjects proves a difference.

Here, I can create my own world with its own consistent rules, but there is always a caveat to writers. Extrapolate your ideas from proved scientific laws and arguments. Of course, you can come up with an idea that upends everything but you stand a heavier chance of losing knowledgeable readers in the field who find it hard to suspend their disbelief. Some ideas that were science fiction yesterday had gone on to become real scientific ideals as if the manuscripts were hypotheses that had to be proven.

Pseudo Science. This realm is much similar to science fiction. It has superstitional attributes affixed. It is like fake science. While some propositions might turn out to be legit when tested, most are easily dismissed by a glance. Religion comes in here because I realized that some people use faith to attempt explaining things they don’t understand, labeling the ones that help their every day lives as good and the more complicated ones evil.

Some mainstream movies feed these assumptions because of how dark neosciences are depicted as evil. And if some aspects of some of those themes are possible, then, evil isn’t such a bad adjective to use. So in earnest, science is like fire which can be a good servant and also a bad master.