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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Theo R Cwithin" data-source="post: 5050067" data-attributes="member: 75712">How is a chariot carrying a fiery globe simpler than epicycles? And how is epicycles simpler than orbital mechanics?I think there's a little misunderstanding in my point. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Sure, nature is complicated, immensely so.  But at it's heart, it is, in fact, understandable.  That's the whole point of science: to break the world down into a series of tiny logical steps and build up from there.  As you said, you often are forced to dumb down an explanation into something grossly simplistic.  But someone can always ask "Why?" at some point, and you can give an answer.  And they can ask "Why?" again, and you can give deeper answer, all the way out to  whereever the most current research is.  And at that point, you the scientist become the one asking "Why?"This, while arduous and often involving difficult mathematics and highly specialized training, is still far simpler in a logical sense, than saying "Thor makes storms."  When someone asks "Why?" you have to make up something based on human experience, with all its inexplicable psychologies, relationships, and so on.  And when the "why?" is asked again and again, more and more irrationality is piled on, until consistency breaks down.  The fact that it's historically "simple" is not because it's inherently so, but rather because your run of the mill peasant never thought to go any deeper, largely because he had better things to worry about.  As I said, as soon as people did start to dig deeper into Nature, they found all kinds of underlying logic-- at first blush very complex, but when broken down into manageable chunks actually quite simple.And I'm saying this as a former scientist, as well as science instructor.  With all due respect, the notion that science is intimidatingly complex is exactly the last thing that a real scientist should be conveying.  He should instead be patiently pointing out the stunning beauty and simplicity hidden underneath all the messy complexity of nature and trying to awe those who will listen if he hopes to see his discipline get new students and funding in the future.  Otherwise he's really no better for society than the highpriests of yesteryear.(I hope none of that came off as a personal attack <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Apologies if I offend!)(And i think I've strayed far enough off topic! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  )</blockquote>

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