“ When you finish teenage, spend 20 minutes in aerobic activity, and 10 minutes in meditation everyday, change your underwear and socks everyday, and also floss your teeth everyday, you will live at least 100 years.”
This is my make up statement after reading some research on aerobic activity, meditation and personal hygiene topics. This statement came in my mind when I was running on a treadmill a few days ago.
My curiosity is can I discover the secret of a long life? If I state this as my opinion, everyone will trash it. If I state this as my belief, I still won’t secure the support. But if I state this as my conviction, then there is a chance, I might secure the support of the majority of people.
Conviction comes from my inside, my research and understanding of the content, and largely my understanding of nature, human beings and health. Not only this, my conviction also seeks the large body of existing data regarding the relationship of aerobic activity, meditation, and personal hygiene to life extension.
Conviction comes with emotion to begin action that is called science, the evolution of new knowledge.
Opinions, beliefs, and truths are just evolving concepts in human mind but with conviction they all lead to facts at some point.
Not only opinions or beliefs or truths, sometimes even evidence on our eyes could be incorrect. In the time of Copernicus, everybody believed that the sun revolves around the earth. Because there was a proof, everybody could walk outside the house and could see the sky. They could see the sun moving from one direction to another. Everyone believed that the earth is the center of the universe. Time passed by with this belief, but later Copernicus discovered the first accurate model of sun-based solar system. Though, he could not see the acceptance of his conviction during his life-time but gave one of the greatest discoveries regarding the universe to the world.
Many opinions and beliefs from Aristotle including the theory of falling objects appeared to be incorrect by Galileo’s conviction. Convictions have to be tested, and precisely measured.
Convictions lead to experiments and observations.
Until now there are no solid evidences, and proofs to support my opening statement. But still my statement looks genuine and makes sense with no guaranteed results. I don’t know the validity of the statement until I commit painstaking observation and interpretation through scientific experiments.
Opinions, beliefs and convictions are not the same. First two can be deviated in different ways but the conviction is substantiated by action.
This is the only way to add a layer on top of layers of knowledge. The origin of more and more science.
Science is not merely a passage for knowledge bank. It is a human evolution for incremental acquisition of understanding of nature through observation. It is basically the continuous understanding of how the universe functions and adapts.
It is also a language of nature, human progress simply depends on how much time and effort we spend to acquire its fluency.
C. V. Raman, a great physicist and first Asian Nobel laureate said, “Science is a fusion of aesthetic and intellectual functions devoted to the representations of nature.” His discovery of the Raman effect would not have been possible if he were not on voyage to London in 1921 where he saw blue sea and wondered why it is blue. Nature gave him a tool for his research.
Our convictions are content of nature. Convictions are what cause a few people to become great scientists. Most of the personal breakthroughs and discoveries begin with a change in opinions and beliefs to convictions.
I spent five plus years graduate career in doing study in cobalt metal and its role in many chemical transformations. When our body’s immune power becomes weak showing fatigue, lethargy or breathlessness, our physician prescribes vitamin B12 to make our immune power strong. Vitamin B12 is one of the largest and most structurally complex vitamins with a biochemically rare cobalt metal. The only organisms to produce vitamin B12 are certain bacteria and archaea.
Nature has already given the power of this metal for human use in the form of vitamin B12. On the basis of that we explore more of its role, understanding and significance for human health.
Nature is the biggest reservoir for lateral thinking, we can take a lesson from it and transfer it to another form, as a scientific development for human progress.
Considering vitamin B12’s humongous impact for humanity, R. B. Woodward and Albert Eschenmoser took one of the classic feats of organic synthesis, total synthesis of vitamin B12 with the effort of 91 postdoctoral fellows and 12 PhD students from 19 nations completing 72 chemical steps giving an overall chemical yield 0.01%.
Nature is not a random force either, everything it does has a reason. We are not aware of the reason deeply. The single driving force to understand nature is through science, the understanding of nature impacts every facet of human lives. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic from natural species of fungus, in 1928 by accident in an abandoned petri dish and it saved at least 200 million lives during World War II. He said, “I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that.”
World’s great discoveries, ideas and inventions are inspired by nature. Archimedes’s eureka moment during bath made him run home naked and Newton’s apple falling observation in his grandmother’s orchard are both inspired by law of nature. Both scientists discovered these findings as a dream but both were happening in nature as they observed consciously or subconsciously.
The modern mathematics is still struggling to figure out the 20-faced polyhedron icosahedron. T4 bacteriophage is a virus in nature and its genetic material is captured in a capsid in the form of an icosahedron. Nature made this complex mathematical structure long back but we understand it now.
Modern physics thought that we invented gear mechanism. But recently scientists found that nature already have grasshoppers to use gear mechanism for jumping. Scientists are inspired by this biomimetic form of jumping because it allows micro-robots to travel over many types of rough terrain where no other walking or wheeled robot could go.
More you learn about nature, you realize how little you know about the real things. Most of the time, science explores nature curiously.
But, there is also another side of science, challenge the understanding of nature. People like Bryan Johnson, an entrepreneur and investor, bring scientists together and tackles unnatural things like asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, and life extension. At present he is developing the world’s first neuroprosthesis, brain-implantable computer, to mimic, repair, and improve cognition. This is not a challenge to nature, this is an overdue understanding of nature in the form of extension.
Science works on nature, not in nature.
What do you think is on the other side of nature?
The answer is science. The understanding of nature.
When we step out of our house, we see a giant laboratory, nature.
We all are kids of nature. Kids don’t do what we say, kids do what they see.
Touch it, smell it, feel it, experiment on it, and observe it to transcend humanity.
We are not too young or too old to start our own experiment, we all are blessed by the limitless laboratory, nature.
Remember, science does not grow with spectators, it grows only with active participants. Be an active participant.
Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina