Science and Imagination

(Inspired by 'The journey to the centre of the Earth' by Jules Verne)

Oh, how I detested physics in secondary school. I abhorred every minute of it. Mostly I chose to be absent those classes, and when I did attend, I did it with such disrespect that I forced myself to fall asleep. Why did I do this? Because I was a romantic. I was a romantic that would not let my imagination be limited by facts, truths and other such silly things. 'Why would anyone want a correct answer to how a rainbow is shaped?' was one of the questions I asked myself.

It did not take long for me to realize that by acting this way, I gave science more glorification and justification than it actually deserves. By accepting science as the ultimate truth I was fooling myself. Philosophers know that in order to decipher the largest questions, one has to start small. Very small. Scientists work in the exact same way, but far from always with the same humbleness. Their enthusiasm affects others and gives science a sort of religious approach.

 I can not help noticing how people relying a lot on science, have a very square perspective on life. It might not be a bad thing though. There must be such dedicated people in order to bring science forward. Meanwhile there will always be others of a more creative and romantic disposition to question, interpret and develop facts and turn them into tools. As a romantic, one can adopt scientific facts and convert them into tools. One learns something perceived to be a fact, and then figures out in which ways it can be used and for which purposes. Jules Verne did this, just to mention one.

 Right now, I am reading 'Has man a future?' by Bertrand Russell and he says this:

"One of the troubles of our age is that habits of thought cannot change as quickly as techniques, with the result that, as skill increases, wisdom fades."


Science is a good, brilliant, mindblowing thing. It has given us knowledge that leads to questions we have never asked ourselves before. But we must remember, that it is still in its infantry and many times it has acted naively, foolishly and advanced too quickly without any thought of the following consequences (here, I find it necessary to mention though, that according Russell, scientists do often consider consequences and he says that it is the ones that orders the experiments-- politicians, entrepreneurs, patients etc.-- who care only about what they can gain from the results and not about what it will actually lead to in the long run).   For hundreds and hundreds of years, man has lived without science and asked the most wonderful questions and by the power of the mind given answers to them that science has approved of hundreds of years later. This indicates, that our most powerful tool to obtain knowledge, is actually our imagination.