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The Big Ideas in Science

What would you include if asked to list the ten ideas in science most useful in explaining the maximum number of phenomena? Or, what would you include on a basic shopping list of concepts necessary to explain the universe in physical terms?

Here is my list of the top ten key or influential ideas -- the big ideas in science:

1. The space-time in which the universe exists.
2. Observations are governed by relativity -- the laws of physics are the same in all frames of reference.
3. The nature of the particles that constitute all matter. The structure of materials
4. How particles interact, mass and force.
5. How Quantum mechanics governs the micro world.
6. The way thermodynamics governs the direction of change. Energy and entropy...
7. The Theory of Evolution. Natural selection.
8. The Periodic Table. Chemical reactions.
9. The expanding universe. Big bang theory.
10. Symmetry.

There are quite a few other contenders of course, e.g. equilibrium, conservation, the plate tectonics model in geology, chaos theory, etc. We would be interested in your ideas of what should be on the list of the 10 big ideas in science, evaluated in terms of their value in explaining things.

We need to have some understanding of the ideas listed above if we are to make real progress in explaining things in the way science does. Remember that science explains things in terms of how physical forces operate, not why things happen in any philosophical or religious sense.

All observations in science point to the fact that the smaller the system probed, the broader the principles uncovered. Much is explained by force (or forces), and the tendency (because of temperature) for things to disorganize. Attractive forces hold things together, but the tendency for entropy (the degree of disorder or randomness) to increase tries to make everything move independently.

So how do things change? Collapse into chaos is the driving force. Cosmic microwave radiation -- fully degraded energy -- is the ultimate heat sink. In terms of the big picture this gives a rather pessimistic view of the ultimate fate of things. The Christian view of the big picture is that things are going somewhere. Its an optimistic view, and we need to explore it in order to put the meaning of life into proper perpective.

Explaining Things

Explanations in science are generally attempted in terms of simple things we are familiar with e.g. land (i.e. solid objects) and sea, (i.e. motion of waves). These phenomena in the everyday macro world are taken as models for things in the micro world. In the micro-world, tiny particles of matter (solid) are pictured as moving through waves of radiant energy (e.g. light). Thus, the most fundamental components of nature are thought to be either particles or waves. But we find that the world of the very small, the micro world, is different from our macro world in some puzzling ways. It needs the ideas of quantum mechanics to handle it, where things like light and electrons can behave as particles or waves, depending on the experiment we do! But whatever big ideas we understand in science, they still only answer the question "how"? We will encourage you to ask a question that science has difficulty dealing with: "why"? Genesis Quest will encourage you to explore mechanisms, to think about meaning, to wonder at the patterns in nature, but also to think about the purpose. This is exciting stuff! Stay tuned...

It is important to recognize that the big ideas in physical science do not explain some of the most wonderful things about life – its origin and purpose for example. This site encourages you to think about these kinds of questions too- questions that none of these big ideas explain.

And let’s recognize that however great the idea, science is an activity of flawed human beings. The originators of some of the best ideas in science also made some of the biggest mistakes!

The history of science is full of examples of very clever people getting things wrong. Pythagoras' name is known to everyone who studied geometry because of his famous theorem about a right angled triangle. Although a bright mathematician, he believed in reincarnation and the evil effects of beans!

Sir Isaac Newton, often called the greatest scientist in history, was the man who formulated the universal laws of force and motion. He was convinced that lead could be turned into gold. This belief in alchemy didn't seem strange in his time, because little was known about the chemical elements in the seventeenth century.

Modern science provides plenty of examples of clever people with odd ball ideas. For example, the famous Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, who with James Watson deciphered the DNA molecule, suggested that life originated on Earth when extra terrestrial civilizations put microbes into shielded spacecrafts, and sent them to seed likely planets - an idea for which there is no evidence.

His suggestion only pushes the problem further back, because he has not said how life might have developed on the planet that sent out the microbes. You don't need to be a Nobel Prize winning scientist to see that substituting two miracles - life plus a desire to seed the universe, for one miracle, the miracle of life alone, doesn't help.

It turns out that the originators of some of the biggest ideas sometimes made some big mistakes.

The biggest ideas should answer the huge questions, about the meaning of life for example, with truth that has a basis. Truth in both science and in religion is not just a matter of opinion’. It has a rational basis.