I believe in science and I believe in magical thinking

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I believe in science and I believe in possibility. What I mean by this is that I believe in science and I believe in so much more than science. Possibility encompasses what is known and unknown. It’s always been this way.

I love the scientific method for its questioning, for its corralling of human innovation and exploration into repeatable patterns. Patterns that we can use to our massive benefit.

But you know what is also true? Science lags reality. Big time. Science is only what we know today. Or our best guess at what we know today.

Our scientific knowledge has been incomplete — and often harmfully wrong — in every era before ours. To think that in our era science has answered all the big questions . . . or that today’s theories will stand forever . . . is to believe that we stand at the ultimate heights of understanding.

That’s vanity without any historical proof.

Is it radical to think that the science of our times might be upended by new discoveries in a thousand years — or a million? As the scientific paradigm of the 17th century has been by subsequent centuries of exploration? Hardly.

Some think that your thoughts cannot possibly influence what comes into your experience. Thankfully millions call bullshit on this and visualize anyway. They pray and affirm anyway. They expressify their inner spirit anyway. To great result.

Skeptics say you are thinking magically when you imagine that how you feel as you envision a better result can draw others to you who will speed you toward that result. Others you’ve never met.

Two generations ago it was considered magical thinking to suggest your thoughts could influence your own body. Now that once preposterous idea — scientifically, never spiritually — is so widely accepted that visualization is now simply what you must do if you are serious as an athlete. Or a corporate chieftain or an entrepreneur. Or ill with a disease. Or you with a dream.

One thing we know for sure is there is more! There is more more more to our universe, to our selves, to our understanding. It is living in this space that is possibility living.

That’s where I live. Loving what science has brought us — knowing there is more, so much more.

….

Part of the What creators do series.
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