Some have bemoaned the lack of interest in science among the populace today, especially among the young. But I believe that is partly a result of a lack of true democracy throughout the society combined with an abundance of hierarchal structures. Science is discovery and discovery requires a lack of boundaries. It also requires the freedom to fail and the freedom from hierarchal dictates. Dispersal forces that promote homogeneity discourage inquiry. Therefore change usually comes from the periphery. It has to because the pressures within stifle creativity and alternative thinking.
Let’s don’t recoil at the challenge of these age-old questions. Often we are more intimidated by expectations of difficulty than we are by the challenge itself. Just because we have been ‘taught’ or led to believe that certain answers are out of reach does not mean that they actually are. One reason it might seem so is because we live in a hierarchal system that directs inquiry to its needs and away from a natural open curiosity. Our ‘free will’ is a misnomer. We have free will within the parameters set for us by forces beyond our control.
The word science instantly makes many people cringe. They relate it to laboratories and physics and chemical equations and all of that. But science is really about knowledge, and learning is a whole lot more fun, and easier too, if you can identify a dynamic weaving itself through the field of study, a dynamic that everything else is built around. As I said, complexity is often a ruse. Let’s not get sidetracked by it. Early modern humans focused on the simple in the environment with an eye towards cause and effect and their accomplishments were prodigious. Of course they weren’t constrained by hierarchal dictates as we are either.