BELIEF

It is a landmark event in anyone’s life: the sudden comprehension that there are others. For most of us, this lightning bolt strikes before we have developed the grammar or syntax we would need to construct a memory of such a concept. Consequently we don’t remember it. But it strikes none the less and we bear the scar throughout our lives. The bolt misses some—perhaps they dodge it—who are no doubt baffled by the rest of us who once were of one mind and now perceive many, who call ourselves members of society, humanity, or civilization.

Science doesn’t insist that we discard our beliefs, only that we construct them falsifiably, subject them to empirical scrutiny, and serve them with a side of well-documented reproducibility. Still, many, if not all, scientists find—at some point before they give up the ghost—that science has not been enough to explain the wonder of existence, the splendor of the cosmos, the problem of life.