A national sense of wonder?

Our science and technology sector lags far behind the rest of the continent. I got to thinking whether that means as a nation, our sense of wonder, the heart of scientific passion, also lags far behind? If the science sector itself is relatively mediocre, what does that say about our national sense of wonder? For the rest of us students, graphic artists, home-makers, interior decorators, restaurateurs, dancers, singers, lawyers, bartenders, publishers, musicians, columnists, senators, congressmen, government personnel, accountants, filmmakers, actors, domestic helpers, bankers, and even nature/science writers, who do not do science directly, do we still have room to utter "Wow!" and to pursue at least at our own level of inquiry as non-scientists, the nature of the things that wow us?

Kids who are exasperated with deep abstract concepts in science always ask why they have to study the science behind daily things they encounter or worse, they ask why dwell on things they think will not affect them because they don’t want to be scientists anyway. The oft-hand remark is always: life will go on whether or not they understand the science behind these things or not. True, life will go on even if you do not learn science. The world will not stop but I assure you, you will. I am not taking about science in terms of equations and technical concepts but about principles and the sense of awe and wonder at the heart of the scientific quest. When you fail to at least appreciate this value of science, you stop short of all the wondrous possibilities you can learn of the world while you are alive. You also fall prey to superstition, muddled-thinking and a narrowing of your views. Science has great respect for facts and evidence and the integrity of a scientist hinges on his/her ability "to call things as they are" which so many of us have difficulty with. Listening to developments in the political scene dominated by lawyers and politicians, I think there should be a course in Law, Governance and Public Administration called "Calling Things as They Are 101" which might help improve the quality of the discourse.

I got a sense of our general demeanor toward supposed scientific evidence and our readiness to believe them last month when I got several e-mails from well-meaning friends who forwarded the study supposedly by PEI (Petroleum Equipment Institute) warning about the use of cellphones while refueling as this might trigger explosions. The way the supposed findings were stated already got me suspicious so I went to the PEI website itself and read the studies and NONE of them came to this conclusion. In fact, in their website, PEI categorically denied any of their studies linking cellphones and explosions while refueling (studies linking static electricity and explosion, yes, but the Philippines suffers/enjoys a humid climate which means static electricity should not pose a problem). So I do not know the reason behind the signs in gas stations telling you to turn off your mobile phone while refueling. If there is, it should not be this supposed study because there is no such thing. I could have probably believed it myself save for a hunch the healthy skepticism of science-reading and writing has given me over the years.

With the arts, science sits as a partner in being the most significant and interesting of all human endeavors (religion, many would argue, also sits in the same category). Science tells you about the nature of the physical world – how stuff works (not "why"). And why should you be interested in the world? Simple: you are in it. Everything and everyone you know now, heard about, knew, or will ever know in your lifetime have been subject to the same laws that we know govern the physical world. Think about the world, its diversity of life-forms now and throughout history. Think about the slow processes that govern the rocks, the skies and the waters and how they interact with these life-forms. Think about the things we humans generally enjoy now with technology and some "ease" of living with the help of certain gadgets as well as those that greatly transformed our view of the world and of each other and our place in the universe such as computers, nuclear bombs, cloning and space travel and communications. Many of these things were developed using principles that govern things we cannot normally "see" and by great scientists who as kids simply pursued their sense of curiosity and wonder.

For those of you who want to try to recover your sense of wonder, think as far back as you can when you got curious about something in the world and then trace how and who helped you make sense of it in your mind. You will find yourselves uncovering a part of yourself you have forgotten. We did that in the early courses in natural history in graduate school. I still often do that when I seem jaded. My first and only nature teacher until I met my own "personal" scientist later in life was my High School best friend who told me stories about being at sea on her Papa’s boat and the creatures she saw. I have always had a pretty fertile imagination so I would extend those stories in my own mind and experience them vicariously. Also, our High School then was right across the UP College of Medicine in Manila and I remember when we had time after class or on lunches we could "escape," she would drag me to see specimens in the UP Med Lab which elicited an equal mix of thrill and horror to us then 14-year-olds. On hindsight, I wonder why the UP med students in the lab who saw us did not shoo us away when we in our convent school uniforms obviously did not belong there. Thanks partly to their obliviousness, that best friend later turned out to be a medical doctor.

To appreciate science even if it is not our main profession will deepen, enlarge and enrich a view of the nature of things that this wonderful world deserves. As with "beauty" being a "wayside sacrament" as Ralph Waldo Emerson called it, to which he said appreciation and enjoyment should be given, I think "science" too should be accorded the same level of appreciation and effort as it is in a sense, a human sacrament, not "holy" in the mystical-religious sense but in the sense of a "dedicated engagement of the human mind" to discover and rediscover layers of the beauty in nature, to know it in a systematic way – a way we can count on.