Science Is the Engine That Pulls Humanity Forward

Welcome to the eponymous novel podcast. The main topic that we started out on was timeless principles of wealth creation, and then we've been touching a little bit on internal happiness and peace and well-being.

But I am, first and foremost, a student of science and a failed physicist, if you will. I loved physics; I wanted to pursue it, but I never felt I was going to be great at it, and I was pulled into more technology, which is applied science. Nevertheless, I've remained a student of science. I remain fascinated by it, and all of my real heroes are scientists because I believe that science is the engine that pulls humanity forward.

I've been lucky to live in an age where scientific progress and technological progress seem not likely but inevitable. So we've gotten used to this idea that life always gets better, despite all the complaining that goes on about how productivity growth is stagnant. The reality is anyone who owns a smartphone, drives a car, or even lives in a house has seen technology improve their quality of life over and over again.

We take this progress for granted, and it's thanks to science. So I continue to be fascinated by science, and to me, science is also the study of truth. What do we know to be true? How do we know something to be true? As I get older, I find myself incapable of having an attention span for anything which is not steeped in truth.

So the background on this particular podcast series is I thought I knew a lot about science, and there was a lot about science that I took for granted, such as what scientific theory is and how scientific theories are formed. Most of us have a vague idea of it, and it can range from some people thinking science is what scientists do—which has a definitional problem, as in what is a scientist—and other people thinking, well, science is making falsifiable or testable predictions, and maybe that's closer to it.

And then sometimes people say, "What's the scientific method?" and "What is the scientific method?" and then they start describing their junior high school chemistry experiment and lose the trail after that, especially in these days where we're told to quote-unquote believe in science, which is an oxymoron. People respect science, but they don't understand what science is.

The idea of what science is getting hijacked sometimes by well-meaning people who want to convince you of the science, and sometimes by not so well-meaning people who just want to influence the way that you think, and feel, and act.