Do you believe in magic?

Before studying science I viewed the world as a mysterious sometimes magical place. As child everything almost everything we encounter is incomprehensible and like every human society that has come before us we often make up our own explanations or myths to explain our experiences. Even when I first started studying science as an undergraduate, molecular processes that I couldn't see had that same magical, mysterious quality for me and I approached the molecular biology that I did in the lab a bit like alchemy. Mix this here mix that there swirl it through a tube put in a fancy machine and voila I get bands on a gel.Magic! But the deeper I've gotten into studying different disciplines of biology the more I've come to fully understand that the world is tangible, made up of physical objects with distinct physical properties that govern and constrain how biological systems behave. This is such a simple concept, but for me, really coming to grips with this fact has been profound. You would think that maybe having this feeling of the world as a magical place taken away from me would be saddening or disappointing but actually I find it to be the opposite.  Instead the world feels less scary and more amazing. Early scientists studied the natural world to better understand the nature of God and while my ideas of the divine may be a little more abstract than their's I have a similar feeling of the natural world as place whose virtues and elegance are just waiting to be discovered.

I feel less intimidated to approach scientific problems. As a kid I hated math. I found it to be completely abstract and incomprehensible and I carried this fear into college and beyond. Using math and seeing it used to model and explain real data has brought me to the realization that math isn't some abstract thing that has been pulled out of the air to torture me with but rather is a different language for describing concrete, physical principles that actually exist in the world. I only wish I had truly understood this sooner so that I would have been less intimidated to take math courses in college and could now be better equipped to wield this powerful tool. When you realize that the problems you are trying to solve, though they are breathtakingly complex, are based on processes that you are perfectly capable of understanding then suddenly you have the confidence to approach them in a rational way.

I have found that studying neuroscience has really driven home this point for me. In my next blog post I will use the example of the inner workings of the brain to further explain my point.  I also promise in upcoming blog posts the stop waxing lyrical about the wonders of the natural world and talk about some the frustrations and controversies of scientific research.