In a blog about knowledge, I would be remiss not to join in on
the fervor and scores of articles and posts about the apparent discovery of the
Higgs boson. I do not consider myself to be even close to an expert in physics,
or a novice follower of physics for that matter. Like many people I have studied physics in
high school, heard of the famous hadron collider and watched a few
documentaries about string theory and Einstein; and that is where my knowledge
on the subject begins and ends. But I am
really excited about this announcement!!
I am excited not because I fully understand what this boson really is (I
don’t), but because we are still learning about our universe and making
momentous discoveries! For me, this
discovery shines a fresh light on what is still unknown to us, the homo sapiens
of planet earth; and with the unknown comes the opportunity for new exploration,
new adventure and learning. It also shines light on the value that we, as a
society, are willing to place on the pursuit of knowledge. I am certain that this scientific discovery
may have some very immediate and practical applications for the world; but that
isn’t necessarily what we are celebrating this week. This week, the articles I have read and the
conversations I have heard are all celebrating the discovery because it is a
discovery, and because we have invested so much time (48 years) and resources
(from scientists and private investors alike) into gaining this new
knowledge. We care about wrestling with
the complexities, we care about untangling what we know from what we do not,
and we care about sharing that information with each other. So, I am very happy to be a part of a society
that got excited about a boson; there is great value in this excitement alone,
and I hope that we will continue to wrestle with our questions with the same
tenacity that lead to this celebration of science.
So..... Here’s to homo sapiens, Here's to CERN and Here’s to the boson!!
This is a great article that explains more about the Higgs boson and this particular discovery: The Economist on Higgs Boson
Although this is coming close to a blunder into Epistemology, and as such not the stated goal of this blog, I can't help but ask if the "discovery" of the Higgs Boson is not really something else entirely? We live in a world of Scientific Realism, which basically postulates that objective reality exists in fundamental form following the laws of physics, etc., entirely independent of the observation of it. We naturally assume that the "discoverers" of the Boson reached out scientifically and expertly into the objective world and plucked the independently existing Boson right out of it, like a ripe plum from a tree. In the philosophical model of Realism, the plums of knowledge are hanging in the objective world (as opposed to consciousness - the subjective world) waiting patiently to be discovered, and our brains, like hard-drives in our computers, take in the gathered data and make sense of it based on our theoretical understandings. What IF? What if the "discovery" of the Boson is in actuality the end game of an act of communal creativity by the individuals searching for it? In other words, the belief that the Boson existed married to the scientific knowledge and creative energy of all concerned brought the sub-atomic particle to the level of existence? Rather than the brain merely interpreting an independent objective world, we take the organic substance presented to us through experience, the modeling clay of knowledge if you will, throw it on the scientific potter's wheel and create a new piece of the universe. To see the search and accumulation of knowledge as an expressive act of creativity rather than merely an educated interpretation of the objective world, changes not only the nature of the search itself, but the very nature of our fundamental interaction with the substance of the universe!
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