The world is not magic

[175560]

Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance wrote this post three years ago. It is of fundamental importance.

Caroline, after making a good-faith effort to understand the distinction between quarks and leptons, pleasantly but firmly demanded to know “What is the practical use of all this? What can we actually do with it? Why is it worth spending time on it

Comments

[selfishgene]

True, but I can also sympathize with people who don't want to subsidize expensive colliders via their taxes.

[175560]

Where in my post did I say that this is about the LHC?

I think you've missed the point.

[selfishgene]

I wasn't disputing the main point. I was going off on a tangential, but not entirely unrelated, point about research funding.

[misshepeshu]

The very fact that our world is comprehensible should fill us with wonder and delight. The world is not magic - and that’s the most magical thing about it.

This part encapsulates exactly how I feel about the world. I've been meaning to write a long entry about how analysis and the scientific method don't strip magic from the world, at least not for me--they add to it. Figuring out how electricity or fire or evolution works is infinitely more interesting and infinitely more satisfying for me than pointing a finger at deities or supernatural entities.

If pixies are real, I hope we get to dissect one. (Which sounds quite terrifically morbid, but I'd feel incredibly silly appending "With its permission and the permission of its family" to this sort of thing. Ah, well.)

And now: HALDANE BREAK!

"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose."
- J.B.S. Haldane