Random curiosities

Okay, so I admit that the title of my blog is a feeble attempt at making something that makes sense out of my initials. Random Curiosities Blog. Even I find it lame sometimes. 😜

But as a scientist, I am also well aware of the fact that my entire field (in fact, it can be argued that the entire collection of all human knowledge and all systematic human endeavors) originated from random curiosities. 

We often use the question Why is the sky blue? (which, presumably, is one question that kids like to ask, but which I also find surprisingly unanswered or, worse, wrongly answered, based on the responses of my now-adult students 😐) to illustrate our natural curiosity about things around us. If you think about it, there is no practical benefit that will be gained from knowing the answer to that question. Humans can still live and go about their lives without really understanding the source of the sky's bluish hue. Other animals have z-e-r-o idea and z-e-r-o motivation to even ask this question, and yet they thrive (okay, they may not even be seeing the sky as we do, but that begs a different question, which we, humans, have also asked and answered). So why do we even bother asking this question, and finding the correct answer? Yup, it is borne out of our natural curiosity, our natural need to know and understand things around us. While it is true that, for some of these questions, there may not be an immediate material benefit for us in knowing the answers, we still do ask and try to answer them because it satisfies our intellectual needs, our thirst for knowledge, if you may. 

Why is the sky blue?

While the morning sky is painted as the usual subject of our curiosity, it's actually the night sky that started to revolutionize our understanding of the world around us. The early Greeks, around 600 B.C.E., looked up the night sky and, drawn by their natural curiosity, started tracking down the locations and movements of the stars; that's when we discovered the planetaes (wanderers). In trying to come up with the explanations for the movements of these celestial bodies, humans began the process of creating rational explanations for the observed physical phenomena, and started to collect these explanations into one coherent whole. This, in fact, is where science as a discipline, began. And, seeing as it is that science is one of the first organized body of knowledge (the word scientia means knowledge), all the other disciplines that came out later can also be technically traced to this early systematic recording of astronomical observations, borne out of curiosity. 

When I entered the field in college, I thought that the majority, if not all, of the questions about the natural world have already been answered. I thought that coming in relatively late into the game, so to speak, puts us, the young researchers, at a disadvantage. 

But now that I have gained a better picture of the field, I realized I was so wrong. Many aspects of the world around us still beg for answers. When the Nobel laureate Dr. David Gross gave a talk in the Philippines in the mid 2000s, I can still remember one of the questions that was posed during the open forum: Whether he believes that there is a limit to human knowledge. And he flatly said no! He gave this analogy of us (humans) living inside in this cavity representing all the known things in the universe, with the outside being very dark, representing all the things we have yet to know. As scientists, our purpose is to push outward, so to speak, and make the volume of this cavity bigger and bigger. 

I agreed, completely (still do), as did the audience (and probably most of the academics in my field). But my realization about that analogy is not just on the volume of what is known, but also on the surface area. In reality, the bigger and bigger the volume of such an actual cavity grows, the wider and wider the surface area gets. Literally speaking, if we are to push outward inside an actual cavity, we need to lay our hands on a part of that surface area. Since the area grows accordingly, we will have more places to put our hands on; yes, even the hands of the new ones who are just starting to join the push. 

I found that realization eye-opening, and being in this field actually made me see for myself how true it is. New scientific discoveries open up more questions that require more research; which, again, opens up new avenues for satisfying our curiosity. I always tell my students that it is at the boundaries of the traditional disciplines where we find enormous growth potential for refining our understanding of the world around us. In the university where I work, there is a strong push for interdisciplinary approaches for solving complex issues and problems. There is much work to do, and much more curiosities to satisfy.  

Now, about that last point: Of course, there is practical wisdom in focusing on questions that have practical, real-life applications. This is mostly economic in nature: we have finite resources and time, so there is greater benefit that goes into solving problems that will affect us. But that does not invalidate those research directions that have no directly foreseeable applications. 

One example that is usually mentioned in discussions like these is the concept of giant magnetoresistance, a phenomenon theorized and observed in solid-state physics research. It did not have practical applications until decades later, in the form of flash drives for computer memories. What started out as an observation from what is most likely a research driven by a random curiosity had an actual benefit, albeit far removed in time from the time of its discovery. 

But more to the point: Scientific curiosity, even in problems with no readily apparent application, should not be stifled, but encouraged. It satisfies a fundamental need for humans to have an intellectual hold of the things around them. 

Oh, and another thing: In science, these random curiosities never end. 

Even in problems where we already have acceptable and reliable explanations, scientists are under the operating principle that there may be something we have not considered yet; that these things that we know may not be the best or the absolute explanation for things. This healthy skepticism has been the major reason why science has been continuing to push the limits of our knowledge, widening our “cavity”, to borrow the analogy we used earlier. 

And I also know this, from experience. I revisit and refine my own explanations for the things I am curious about. May this blog be a record of my never-ending random curiosities. ■