Peace: A Self-taught Species

Our journey continues with a closer look at the process of science. When something works as efficiently as science has in the service of humanity there is seldom any reason to pay any attention to any limitations it may possess. But the limitations inherent in our scientific processes have lessons to which we need to pay attention.

The ability to do science is what distinguishes us from the rest of the species.
But we sometimes overlook the fact that as a tool of discovery the goal of science is determine what we need to know in order to survive in our environment. When we couple this with the fact that we do science by observing how other species react to their environment the unnerving conclusion is that we are not as intellectually superior as we tend to think we are. We do science because we do not know, and we observe the other species because they do know. I leave it to you to determine which species is smarter.

We do have a leg up on them because we are able to teach in a way they cannot. They cannot pass on their information to us. We must obtain that information by observing them, thus making us the only self-taught species on the planet.

This is a larger potential problem than we could imagine. Not knowing drives our scientific passion but because we do not know exactly what we need to know we have no way of knowing when we know what we should know. We have no teacher to tell us that we have arrived. This means that we may stop our discovery in a particular area after finding a comforting solution that solves one of our survival needs, when a different perspective may provide a more comprehensive solution.