Flatlanders

I belong to team science. I believe in the scientific method, evidence-based medicine, and data-driven decision making. And yet, I frequently find myself in spirited disagreement with my other empirically-oriented friends. We usually agree, more or less, about what we know. Where we butt heads is when we talk about what we don’t know. 

There’s a metaphysical parable about a place called Flatland. It’s a flat, two-dimensional plane that stretches infinitely in all directions of the compass, but has no up or down. The inhabitants of this place, called Flatlanders, have an excellent understanding of how things work in their two-dimensional world. They can measure distance and velocity and acceleration, and predict a great deal about how things will happen there, and why. But once in a while, something odd happens that they can’t explain. 

Every so often, something falls down onto Flatland from above, or bubbles up from below. Flatlanders see the effects of these events in their world, but since they have no way of directly observing, or even conceptualizing, the spaces above and below their dimension, none of it makes much sense. To them, the rain doesn’t fall down on them, it’s simply the sudden appearance of moisture. All they can do is make up theories about spontaneous wetness.

The other day, I heard an interview with a theoretical physicist who studies dark matter. He explained that we believe dark matter exists because we extrapolate the gravitational pull it exerts, but we have no way of directly observing, measuring or describing it. He went on to say that there seems to be an unexplained force in the universe called dark energy, which is equally unobservable and undescribable. All told, dark matter and dark energy appear to comprise 95% of the “stuff” in the universe. The other 5% is the stuff we can actually observe and describe. Some scientists have conjectured that all this dark stuff might actually exist in another dimension, making it inaccessible and incomprehensible to our three-dimensional bodies and minds.  In other words, we may be Flatlanders.

This is where my disagreement with my friends usually starts. They would argue that philosophy and metaphysics are un-testable conjecture and drivel. Why waste our time asking questions that can’t be answered with data? My response is this: because the 95% of the universe that we don’t understand (and may never understand) could still be affecting our lives everyday. And when the empirical data that lets us act with certainty runs out, we still need to grope our way through our lives with whatever tools remain. 

I’m team science--but I’m also team mystery.