SCI-ART LAB

Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

Krishna: People claim so many things. They say dolphins commit suicide; dogs commit suicide when their masters die or leave them. 

The picture is complicated for animals. For an act to be classified as a suicide, the agent must know that what it is doing will end its life. That kind of abstract thinking is probably out of the range of animals — even advanced ones.

It's more likely that animals will inadvertently terminate their own lives when depressed or lonely. Highly bonded animals change their behaviour when they lose a companion. For example, dogs in such situations sometimes go into depression and reject food and attention until they eventually die. The inactivity caused by depression is not the same as suicide, even though it may lead to death.

Self-destruction in the natural world is fairly common. Pea aphids will literally blow themselves up when threatened by a lady bug, scattering and protecting their brethren and sometimes even killing the lady bug. While this may not be suicide in the human sense, it shows how preservation of the community may mean destruction of the individual.

Source:

Q: Where can we say "Science doesn't work here"?

Krishna: Nowhere in this universe!

Alright some people have raised some Qs  and said science doesn't work with regard to such Qs. This is not understanding the word science properly.

Science has two aspects:

One: The principles with which this universe came into existence and run by it.

Two: The process with which we study this universe.

If you take the first aspect into account, you will not find any place in our universe where scientific principles don't work and are not responsible for things existing and things happening. Without these principles this universe doesn't work and collapses and becomes non-existent. The very fact that it is working so well is evidence enough that science is working everywhere in this universe and running it wonderfully.

Right, if you come to the second aspect, i.e., the process with which we study and try to understand our universe, it is not science that is not working. It 's human mind's inadequacy to understand things in our 'scientific universe' responsible for that, not science.

Why do you try to shift your inadequacies to science and say science cannot do this or science cannot do that? Science, the thing this universe is run by, can be tackled only by science. If you cannot use your tool properly and blame science for it, it is like a bad worker blaming his tools for his lack of efficiency.

Now show me with genuine evidence a place in this universe where science doesn't work. Mere logic and arguments won't do.

Q: How does science(s) answer “why should (not) I kill that insect stinging me on my toe?”?

Krishna: Well, the insect (like bee or some insects like it) might be useful in pollination which might bring you food to your plate by producing seeds, fruits and vegetables after the process. Just bear the pain and wait for the food. Doesn’t that make sense?

And ants control pests naturally. Like ladybeetles, green lacewings, and other beneficial bugs, ants often help control pests (they actually support some pests, too ) by eating their eggs and young or disturbing them during feeding.

Ants are such an effective biological control agent, in fact, that some growers introduce them on purpose as part of an Integrated Pest Management strategy.

So leave that ant alone even if it stings you - it helps you in reality. Even if a friend fights with you and hits you, don’t you forgive him for the sake of friendship?

Does that make sense? :)

Q: Is science opinion?

Krishna: NO! Opinions can originate from (culturally, religiously, politically, emotionally) conditioned minds, prejudiced minds, and irrational minds.

While genuine science strictly sticks to scientific method to arrive at a conclusion and establish facts, pseudo-science can be based on ‘opinions’.

Scientists might sometimes express their ‘opinions’ on some subjects but don’t equate the scientists’ opinion with ‘science’ because anything that doesn’t follow a scientific method is not science.

Scientists should state only scientific facts - and they usually do that - but some might falter and mis-step and express their opinions too.

However, nobody takes beliefs, prejudiced and irrational opinions seriously in the scientific world. They don’t stand a chance of getting established as facts of science.

So the answer to your question is an emphatic “NO”!

Q: Is it true that Richard Dawkins could not say the full name of the Origin of Species in an interview?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/feb/15/richard-dawkin...

Krishna: This is funny. Sometimes we experience something - what we call - ‘brain freeze’. It happens to me very often. It happened once to me while I was live on TV.

I was explaining gravity as a distortion of spacetime. I explained it alright but not in the exact words. I struggled a lot to recollect the exact words but couldn’t! People watching it might have thought I was dumb, stupid and ignorant :)

But this happens to many scientists. Many scientists tweet about their ‘brain freezes’ and we all just laugh them away.

Only we know how and why this happens and puts us in embarrassing positions.

Are we stupid, dumb and ignorant?

Our brains work strangely!

How the brain of a Polymath copes with all the things it does

I Love My Toddler Essays.

I can understand if this is true. But my thinking about Dawkins doesn’t change even a lit bit.

People whose minds don’t have enough work to do might ‘talk or gossip’ about it and ridicule us but who cares really? We have better things to do.

Q: Can science provide answers to every question? Can science provide solutions to every problem or issue of life?

Krishna: Can science provide answers to every question?

Not at the moment because of limitations of the human mind. But Nature - which is based on scientific principles- has all the answers waiting to be found.

Can science provide solutions to every problem or issue of life?

For me only science has provided all the solutions to all the problems I faced. That is why I trust science more than anything else.

That again depends on the human mind’s efficiency to use science to solve the problems!

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Q: What is stronger, science or nature?

Q: What is more important, science or nature? 

Krishna: Nature is science based and science run. Without science, nature, this universe, you and I cannot exist. You cannot separate science and nature. If you understood this, you wouldn’t have asked this Q.

Galileo famously stated that our universe is a “grand book” written in the language of mathematics.

Science includes many principles at least once thought to be laws of nature: Newton’s law of gravitation, his three laws of motion, the ideal gas laws, Mendel’s laws, the laws of supply and demand, and so on. Other regularities important to science were not thought to have this status.

Laws of Nature (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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