WHAT hope has consciousness of understanding the world, when it doesn鈥檛 yet understand itself?
The answer is we don鈥檛 know 鈥� but it鈥檚 a blast trying to find out. Science is the art of asking hard questions and, whether or not we find answers, finding new perspectives that extend our knowledge.
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Often those perspectives are truly mind-blowing, as our special feature 鈥�Get your head around the most mind-bending concepts in science鈥� makes plain. You might dispute our choice of 13 of the most intriguing ideas from science and technology 鈥� indeed, when we undertook a similar exercise in 2014, the list was entirely different (13 December 2014, p 32).
But all exemplify how scientific enquiry defines and shapes our thinking in often unexpected ways. They illustrate the beauty of the subject: how it follows no agenda or preconceptions, but guides us on a stumbling path to greater enlightenment.
Science may often be hard to get our heads around, but to echo the ending of our special feature: it is the worst way of seeking truth, apart from all the others that have been tried from time to time.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淐onceptual difficulties鈥�
