In his Opinion piece, J. Murray Gibson persuasively argues for moderating scientific competence with modesty. Physics is not just about pursuing one’s curiosity with enthusiasm and asserting the superiority of its method over others. Physics also has a role that is best achieved through pursuing thoughtful conduct. And Gibson’s perspectives can be expanded to look at “arrogance” of the physical sciences in general, rather than just physics.
Physical scientists have come to believe that their scientific method will help them understand and quantify everything they need to know about the material world. They believe that, with that knowledge, they could control and subdue that world. Such confidence is double-edged. On the positive side, it nurtures curiosity, traditionally the main inspiration for scientific inquiry. On the negative side, it fosters an attitude of conquest that is true arrogance. Especially troublesome at present is that the attitude of conquest is nurtured more by commercialism than by inspiration. The universality of Isaac Newton’s and Albert Einstein’s findings is truly impressive. Yet, those findings are limited; they are not applicable to the remarkable natural phenomenon, the life-to-death cycle. Living things possess remarkable abilities to sense their surroundings, to determine what parts of their environment are acceptable for sustenance, and to adapt their bodies and chemical behavior to changes in the world around them. Higher-order living things simultaneously possess opposites such as love and hate, compassion and violence, rationality and irrationality. Unlike the behavior of inanimate objects, that of living things cannot be predicted with equations; the elements of any such equation are capable of making judgments, whether conscious or unconscious.
Most people in our modern technological society, led on by the cockiness of the physical sciences, think that they can subdue Earth as they please. But nature’s biosphere, the nutritional cycle, and the hydrological cycle are all intertwined in a way that cannot be predicted or controlled. Although practitioners of biotechnology and genetic engineering succeed in manipulating chemical molecules, they have no way of rationalizing how species and genera as a whole will respond to human manipulations. Viruses and microbes that quickly develop resistance to new drugs or vaccines and pests that develop resistance to pesticides demonstrate the lack of knowledge. Physical scientists cannot predict and control at will because living things possess abstract attributes that lie beyond their science’s foundational concepts. True, a connection exists between the physical body and those abstract attributes, but no framework yet exists to make sense of the connection between the palpable and the abstract.
Just as profound as the knowledge of the physical world is the knowledge related to the functioning of Earth—the environment, ecosystems, and the behavioral patterns of living things. Those areas of inquiry require descriptive, qualitative, and intuitive thinking. Such qualitative knowledge is as deep and valuable as the quantitative knowledge of physical properties and laws.
Gibson’s seemingly simple statement that “we easily forget that we are all too human” is, in fact, profound. Humans are as capable of great leaps of imagination, creativity, beauty, and compassion as they are of indescribable violence and destruction. Concerns about global warming, destruction of habitats, and pollution of air and water, as well as the desire of world commerce to control natural resources for profit, indicate that the world of the living transcends the scope of the physical sciences. Many in the natural sciences think that we are at a threshold of either adapting our living to the constraints of nature or wreaking incredible damage to Earth as we destroy ourselves.
The arrogance that Gibson highlights, rather than being an irritation in the form of having to tolerate someone’s attitude, has more profound implications. Much will
depend on whether we as physical scientists opt for the path of arrogance, or moderate it with a recognition that physics is only one component of the totality of human knowledge.
