What makes humans the smartest? Ask yourselves this,it is not uncommon knowledge that humans are the most intelligent species on this little blus planet, but why?
The massive sperm whales have a brain weighing 8 kgs, they should be the most intelligent. Okay maybe its because the sperm whales brain on an average makes up for .05% percent of the whales entire body mass. By that logic humming birds have a brain that is 4.2% of their body mass(by comparision ours is 2% of our body mass). Okay maybe its because they use only a very small percent of their brain at a time. By that logic dolphins, who use 20% of their brain, should be the smartest.we only use 10 % of ours. Okay maybe because a lot of that brain power is used in sonar and movement and all of that underwater mumbo-jumbo. Some octopi, have 9 brains, 8 for each limb and 1 main one for the heart nervous system and all other functions. Still, we seem to be the smartest, the most intelligent.
Science in itself follows a few very basic priniciples, and these priniciples themselves are very flexibe, as we’ll see in some time. Anything vaguley related to science starts out with an obesrvation, this observations leads to some sort of reasoning, that reasoning is only a potential deduction till it has been proved, and then once the deduction is tested and proved we have new knowledge and it is now up to us on how to use it. These are the four basic principles, observation, deduction, testing, and implementation
Over a long period of time neanderthals would have observed that fire is associated with what we identify as smoke, they must have also observed that smokes appears when you rub two dry pieces of wood together, and so he deduced he might build a fire if he rubbed two sticks together and so he tested it and the deduction got confirmed. He must've implemented in the fact that it produces light, heat, or is harmful to touch. Although it sounds very systematic and seems like you could've have don all this over the span of two-three hours, you have to consider their reduced brain capacity and the fact that they would've made the different steps over the course of years.
Over the years science has come from making fires, to discovering what atoms and elements are, to a time when the periodic table consists of 24 man made elements. To put into perspective what we have achieved, Ancient Greece thought that gods walked the heavens, the Ramayana talks about Ravana’s flying chariot, Christianity talks about turning water into wine, and today, you have astronauts in the ISS, you have the middle class taking vacations on ‘flying chariots’ and you have chemical reactions which can essentially turn water, the universal solvent, into wine, a complex-alcoholic carbohydrate. Today's modern man would be considered a god around 300 years back.
The irony of science is that in the search for answers, we will never find the end to all our questions. There will always be more to know. When Aristotle asked himself what makes up everything we see, he answered it was always a combination of four elements-Earth, Air, Water and Fire. Early chemist stated that atoms make up every thing around us and nothing more, later on chemists found out that even atoms were divisible and so were there composite particles. The latest theory on the ‘matter’(geddit...matter) is that all forms of matter are just imprints on a universal field called the Higgs Field. Even the endless pursuit of alchemy, turning any metal into gold, is now futile as we now know that radioactive substances could, in theory, be made to undergo nuclear decay such that they form gold.
Everything from how a car runs to the laptops you works, from how your body works, to the correct way to work on your body, from the gastronomical breakthroughs being made in Charles Heston’s “The Fat Duck” to the cosmetics and beauty creams one applies, is all a product of science. It is amazing how we as a race have inculcated science and technology into our life with not so much as a hiccup. Its as if it is a gift of ours, to see an opportunity, an opportunity to understand, to know and improve upon the opportunity.
Science is infinite. It was always infinite, remains to be infinite, and always will be infinite. Science is not only a mere subject you study in school. It is a way of life, it is an inherent quality of each and everyone of us. It is our inquisition, it is our curiosity, it is a very characteristic of what makes us human. So I implore you, harness that innate, child-like curiosity, question the workings of everything around you and you'll be fascinated by how much more there is to know.
- Shivam Panda
Good analogy