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Asked by anon-252013 on 28 Apr 2020.
Question: Have you ever stopped and thought about how complicated the world is and how nothing is really what we think it is and that everything is a lot more complicated than we perceive it to be?
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Ry Cutter answered on 28 Apr 2020:
All. The. Time!
A lot of physics, especially the stuff surrounding astrophysics, has to be based on fundamental assumptions (some of which are probably incorrect!) We have to make these assumptions for lots of reasons…so I’m gonna list ’em.
1.) We don’t know enough! Like in the situation of quantum mechanics, there are processes we simply don’t understand, but know the consequences of. We can make assumptions about these outcomes and use them to model the universe without knowing the complete picture of what is actually happening.
2.) The maths is too hard, or impossible. Some theories, like general relativity and quantum mechanics, don’t work together mathematically. Because of this, we have to make assumptions on what we think the outcome will be and use new maths and models to show this off.
3.) The physics is too complicated. When running computer simulations, like modelling the formation of planets, there is a whole bunch of physics involved; from Gravity to fluid plasma dynamics (actually called magnetohydro dynamics.) The more physics we introduce, the slower the simulation. Therefore, to finish simulations on a timescale to see the results, we have to make assumptions to speed up getting the results.
We will never completely understand the universe, but our guesses about how it works will keep getting better and better… and isn’t that the point of science!
Fantastic Question,
Ry
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Greg Wallace answered on 28 Apr 2020:
May I reccomend the podcast ‘Stuff To Blow Your MInd’. They have lots of episodes on the nature of perception, how our minds can trick us, and how our judgement can fail us.
I do find myself thinking about this sometimes, but I remind myself that although the world is messy and complicated and confusing it can be grappled with. You can break down the problems, learn about them, investigate them, and test them. With persitence, questions, and creativity you can understand the world, to a ceratin extent. Your understanding won’t be perfect, but It’ll be a start, and you can keep improving on it from there.
The more we understand the world, the better we can move within it and change it.
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Paula Koelemeijer answered on 28 Apr 2020:
Definitely! The more you dive into a subject, the more it seems you don’t know! What seems to be presented as a fact when you are younger, appears speculative during university, and pretty unknown once you start researching it properly!
This can be really frustrating from time to time, but it is also why research exists – sometimes we confirm existing hypotheses, but other times we find out new and exciting things!
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Susan Cartwright answered on 28 Apr 2020:
Lots of times. “It’s more complicated than you think” is pretty much the motto of scientific work! Given that I’m a neutrino physicist, and spend my days trying to understand a particle that is so hard to detect that 65 billion of them pass through every square centimetre of your body every second without leaving a trace, I am particularly aware of this.
However, do not despair! As Einstein almost said (the wording is actually slightly different from what he actually wrote, but the sense is correct), “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible.” Quantum mechanics may be difficult to get your head round, and physicists and philosophers are still arguing about its fundamental basis, but the fact is that you can use it to predict experimental results to incredible precision. General Relativity is weird and counter-intuitive, but we can use it to do all sorts of things, from understanding the gravitational waves emitted when two black holes coalesce to making the GPS work right on your phone. The world is more complicated than we would like it to be, and there are things we do not understand – but the tools of mathematics and physics are making more and more of it accessible to our calculations.
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Anne Green answered on 28 Apr 2020:
Yes, and not just the world but the entire Universe. I’m a cosmologist, so my research involves trying to understand what the Universe is made of and how it got to be like it is today. In someways it’s surprising that we can do this, given how complicated smaller things (like human beings!) are. In other words, sometimes its possible to explain ‘the big picture’ without understanding all of the small details.
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anon answered on 28 Apr 2020: last edited 28 Apr 2020 4:55 pm
Yes, this is everyday occurrence in science!
We like to “invent” simple explanations, because they are easy to understand, and to some extent they work well. Like mathematical models. But as we learn more and more details, the models that don’t account for them start to fail, and then we build more sophisticated models.
But we always start with simplicity, because it is much easier (for models, also computationally faster) and we only complicate things when we need to. -
Malgorzata Drwila answered on 28 Apr 2020:
Great question! I get that feeling quite often. It makes me feel overwhelmed and angry about myself for not understanding the world properly. Every part of science is massively complicated, from quantum physics to sociology and civil law. On one side the nature is a never-ending miracle while on the other side human beings complicate things a lot.
To keep my mind in peace and happiness I don’t let those thoughts stay too long in my head 😉
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Marios Kalomenopoulos answered on 28 Apr 2020:
Two short comments on things that weren’t covered that much in the other answers:
First of all, maybe a word of warning. Nowadays, you can find many people that use the complexity of the world around us, to downgrade science and doubt some very fundamental results. A good example on that is climate change. However, as many others answers explained, science is usually built with successive approximations (or even radical changes in our way of thinking about things), but always the new results have to be consistent with the good predictions of the old models and our observations. So, although you have to keep always a critical approach, a good understanding of some simple physical principles can give you very good insights of how our super-complicated world works. You just have to be careful where to draw the line!
Secondly, an advice. Because many things are complicated, this means that they’re difficult to understand. There are many cases where I get stuck, even in simple things, when I deal with something new. I think the lesson here is don’t be harsh with yourself. Each person find difficult, different things and maybe require some more time than others. When I reach a dead-end, I really try to stop thinking about it to avoid getting depressed. Instead, I focus on something else, or do something relaxing, and then try a new take from the beginning, with a clear mind. Of course, different people use different techniques, but this works for me well!
Very nice question!
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anon answered on 29 Apr 2020:
All the time! One of the reasons why I wanted to be a scientist was also this. I wanted to explore things that do not look like what they are. Physics to me was a fantasy book and I loved fantasy books.
So that said, it is important to understand that this is the reason scientists need to carefully study their subjects and do research on it for years. The world is much more exciting then it looks, but by studying, and research, we can answer complicated questions with simple solutions.
It is true that the sometimes things are more complicated than they look, but at the same time, the solutions can be much simpler than we think at first. This is one of the joys in research and also a guiding principle – we try to find the simplest solution that can exist 🙂
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Jon Whitehouse answered on 29 Apr 2020:
Yes, and that’s exactly what interests me about studying physics and engineering. We can only use what we know to study new things, because we don’t know how to look for something we can’t imagine, so the more we study, experiment, try everything possible, the more possibilities of new things to find we have.
Keeping a completely open mind is key, maybe everything we think we understand is wrong, that’s happened so many times in history, don’t make the assumption that because were are more “advanced” that we can’t be equally wrong. They probably thought the same back then… -
Bethan Charles answered on 29 Apr 2020:
All the time, but that’s what makes it so phenomenal. There is always more to discover, and that is part of what makes our world so interesting. I hope that in years to come we discover things that make the world as we see it now look simple.
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Tana Joseph answered on 29 Apr 2020:
Absolutely yes! One of the joys of being a scientist is that I get to explore the Universe, learn more about it and then realise how much more we still don’t know. It’s thrilling!
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Imogen Whittam answered on 29 Apr 2020:
Absolutely! I study galaxies, which it turns out are really complicated. But that’s what makes it exciting! It’s very satisfying when you’re able to complete even a very small part of the puzzle.
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Rob Long answered on 30 Apr 2020:
Constantly! In school you are taught science through a series of facts but as you enter higher and higher levels of education, more and more assumptions and caveats are pointed out. By the end of it you question how little we actually know about even the seemingly simplest of topics. This is like climbing a mountain, the higher up you climb (the more science you learn) you are able to see more and more that you haven’t explored (all of the science that you don’t know about).
The reason why so many scientists devote themselves to developing models is because reality is just too complex. If we could model every real system exactly then many fields of research wouldn’t be needed anymore!
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Sarah-May Gould answered on 1 May 2020:
Great question! This is one of the reasons I became a scientist, and it looks like a lot of people who have already commented feel the same way. I find that as I learn more about science, things seem both less complicated and more complicated at the same time: less complicated because every time you learn a new piece of science you can use it to explain something you didn’t understand before, and more complicated because now you know about the next question to ask.
Your question made me think of this picture: https://abstrusegoose.com/275
People who aren’t scientists will probably see the world around them more like the picture on the top. People who like science might see something more like the bottom picture – there are equations and theories and scientific concepts describing everything around us and they help us understand how the world works. For me the world is really beautiful if you look at it that way 🙂
Comments
annachaplin commented on :
This is a great question and the answer is yes!
At school we learn subjects separately. We go to an English class then we have a Geography class but we rarely learn about when various subjects mix together. In the real world all of these subjects are linked with each other and as you mentioned this makes everything very complicated!
My research focuses on the causes of depression. On the surface this may appear like a relatively simple question. The deeper I get into research, the more I see the connections between our health, genetics, and environment. There are so many things that can influence mental health including the way we are treated by society, how our immune system works, and our parent’s habits when our mums were pregnant with us. We have to try and take into account all of these influences when we are looking at one specific cause of depression.
I love the complicated and confusing parts of science because it forces us to think bigger.
Anna 🙂