The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.
The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.
Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Tuesday, 4 February 2025

Questions Science Cannot Answer (and Nor Can Religion)

For science to progress it must first ask questions. Many times the answer can be found, albeit sometimes after years, perhaps decades or even centuries, of searching.

Gravity is a good example. The Greek philosophers pondered why it was that things fall naturally. Aristotle, for example, postulated that the reason for this was that the Earth was the centre of the Universe and that therefore all objects fell towards it. Plutarch, on the other hand, claimed that gravity was not unique to the Earth.

In the 7th century CE, an Indian mathematician and astronomer suggested that gravity was a force. One thousand years later, in 1687 Newton published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) in which he described what we now know as the Laws of Gravity. It took more than 2,000 years to answer the question. Even so, science did manage to answer it.

But, what of those questions that science cannot answer? How do we answer them? Indeed, do we even want answers to them?

These are the sort of questions that occur to us when we smell a flower, look up at the night sky, or kiss another human being. Why is this flower so beautiful? How big is the Universe? What is this feeling inside?

We answer these questions with words and expressions of awe, magnificence, wonder, love, and mystery.

And, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry answered in The Little Prince1 what is important and what is of consequence is invisible.

It is not knowing, not having an answer, which speaks to our heart, soul, and humanity most exquisitely.

Science cannot answer such questions. Nor should we expect science to do so.

We should not expect religion to do so either. That science cannot answer some questions does not mean that God (or some other deity) must be enlisted to fill the gap.

Gaps in knowledge do not need to be filled. Indeed, it is in the gaps that we find ourselves face-to-face with our insignificance and our magnificence at the same time.

Gaps allow us to notice the beauty of a flower. Gaps allow us to contemplate, yet never fully appreciate, the sheer immensity of the cosmos.

Gaps allow us to feel the love in a kiss.

Addendum: Nothing in the above should be read as a refutation of either science or religion. Simply, that we need not look for answers where we do not need answers – we simply need to seek the wonder in the mystery.

Note:

1. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1974. First published 1945

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