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The Origins of Science: Let's face it—there's absolutely no way around science. Right from the early ages, ancient societies didn't always pursue the knowledge of the natural environment around them from the curiosity of their hearts—it was oftentimes a life or death decision. As early societies were plagued with diseases, infections and poor nutrition, certain people like Tao Hong Jing, a prominent polymath from the Southern Qi and Liang Dynasties, realized that specific plants had medicinal effects that could cure illnesses. He recorded his observations, classified his findings and documented the ecology of many plants and their relationship with the environment. This was protoscience—an early phase of trial, error, and systematic observation that paved the way for the modern scientific method. Like everybody of his time, Tao Hongjing did not possess a sophisticated paradigm of knowledge on plant cells, cellular pathways or ATP like we do today; however, he still used empirical observation to create ways to cure his people of illness. He was far from the only one that did this. Long before the field of science was formally established with research laboratories, world-class equipment or federal grants, people like Roger Bacon recorded empirical recipes for gunpowder and English theologian Robert Grosseteste adopted geometric models to study optics. Hey, even I did it! When I was six, I used to unscrew flashlight bulbs and toy lamps, hook them up to different batteries, test different toy sockets and observe their physical reactions to make accurate guesses in order to determine their visual output. That's protoscience! Back then, I had no clue about the formal scientific method or even what a molecule was, but I still behaved like an evidence-based investigator. Do you know why?
We're Naturally Hardwired For Evidence: As the climate shifts of the Pleistocene Epoch began to take their toll on humans around two million years ago, hominins were forced out of rapidly shrinking forests and into open savannas that demanded advanced environmental tracking, analytical reasoning skills and evidence based assessment of the natural landscape. Natural selection strongly favored mutations in brain anatomy which would bolster critical thinking skills. Some of these most prominent mutations were ARHGAP11B and NOTCH2NL which triggered a significant proliferation of neural stem cells. Another famous mutation among evolutionary biology was DRD4-7R, it's a 48 base pair sequence that repeats 7 times that altered the brain's dopamine responses to curiosity. Together, this drove increased complex causal reasoning and predicting reasoning in the prefrontal cortex along with vast spatial mapping in the parietal lobe for early nomadic hunter gatherer societies. This also led to improved changes to the occipital lobe for accurate and precise visual pattern recognition. Ultimately, these mutations favored the natural inclination towards evidence based reasoning, pattern recognition and curiosity which laid the core foundations for the use of the scientific method. The similarities between Tao Hong Jing's plant documentation, Robert Grosseteste's evidence-based geometric models and even my childhood curiosity for light bulbs didn't arise out of nowhere- this practice of the scientific method is deeply rooted in our brain anatomy!
The Limits of Modern Science:
Yet, even though after hundreds of years of well-established science that has miraculously created computers, cameras, trains, planes, tanks and artificial intelligence that have leaped human society forward into remarkable progress, there is still one thing that the modern world of science hasn't conquered yet- the Umwelt. What is the Umwelt? What role does it have in our society? Well, mark my words- a lot! Coined in 1902 by the late Baltic-German biologist and philosopher Jacob von Uexküll, the Umwelt is a semiotic and biological concept that encapsulates an organism's unique and individual sensory environment. Essentially, through natural selection over billions of years, evolution only favored traits that would help an organism's survival. Our eyes, ears and brains aren't the way they are necessarily to help us understand absolute truth- they exist only because they are a byproduct of mutations that helped our genetic descendants survival. How does this affect modern scientific discovery? Well, because modern science is ultimately a byproduct of human brains that were only made for survival, we can only detect less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum, we cannot hear sound below 20 Hz and our ears cannot hear the colossal, low-frequency acoustic waves generated by ocean currents, volcanic shifts, and tectonic movements that animals like elephants and whales use to map the planet. Unlike many birds, cephalopods and insects, we cannot perceive the polarization, the angle of vibration, of light waves. To humans, polarized and unpolarized light look identical. What do we do to counter our severe sensory limitations? Scientists spend hundreds of millions annually to purchase and develop equipment to help them counter their Umwelt blind spots everyday in the lab! Research grants go through the roof on Cryo-Electron Microscopes, Laser Interferometers and Radio Telescope Interferometer Arrays to bolster measuring precision and data collection because our Umwelts wouldn't allow us to see these natural properties with the naked eye in the first place. I suppose in this vast universe, there might still some forces that exist that cannot be described with the English language alone. We may not know how to define them and perhaps never will due to our Umwelt. This begs the question- can science fully explain the entire universe?
A Rational Declaration of Ignorance (Personal Anecdote & Opinion):
In order to write this post, I had to do a significant amount of research into evolutionary biology, history, and human psychology. That process reminded me of a fundamental lesson: the more my pool of knowledge expands, the more I realize the vast perimeter of my own ignorance. Ironically, I am far more humble about my knowledge now than I was last week when I knew less, and I am much more curious to learn.This is a textbook inversion of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Coined by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, this cognitive bias causes beginners with limited knowledge to vastly overestimate their competence. This happens because the exact skills required to recognize your own deficiencies are the skills you lack when you are new to a subject. By moving past that initial overconfidence into a state of humility, I experienced the classic shift from ignorance to true curiosity.Famous American physicist John Wheeler had a perfect metaphor for this. Imagine you are on a small island; the land represents your knowledge, while the surrounding sea represents ignorance. As you study, research, and expand your island, the land grows larger. However, as the area of the island expands, its perimeter—the shoreline—naturally grows longer. Suddenly, you are exposed to a massive, sprawling boundary facing the infinite ocean of the unknown. True expertise breeds humility, whereas ignorance breeds overconfidence.I experienced this firsthand in my personal life. I did not grow up in a religious family—faith was never a topic of discussion—and by the age of 11, I decided I was an atheist. I adopted a rigid, materialist worldview, believing the universe was nothing more than atoms and molecules reacting. I held this belief for a long time.Things began to change at age 15 when I was introduced to particle physics. I studied fermions, tau neutrinos, the flavors of elementary particles, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. That is when I stopped thinking in a black-and-white binary and began to see the world through nuance, inherent uncertainty, and intricate complexity. I no longer asked myself, "Do you believe in God?" Instead, I asked, "How do you define the word God?"As my knowledge expanded, so did my doubts. I became an agnostic. I never viewed my agnosticism as a "belief" per se, because I never claimed to know anything with absolute, unyielding certainty. Agnosticism isn't a belief system—it is a rational declaration of ignorance.
