Why Science is mankind’s greatest intellectual accomplishment

Conduct the following thought experiment (if you dare): Select five physicists from five of the most diverse parts of the globe you can imagine:

– a capitalist from the US brought up as a Christian

– a communist from Cuba brought up as an Atheist

– a socialist from China brought up as a Confucian

etc. etc.

Now ask them the following question:

“Is it true, that to the best of your knowledge, that there are only four forces (strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic, gravitational) IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE?”

And all five will answer yes. (Not withstanding that there may be more forces, such as anti-gravity due to dark matter, etc.)

The point is, their agreement is INDEPENDENT of their background, belief system, family influence, politics, religion, etc.

FURTHER, if we ever make contact with Martians (or any other interplanetary inhabitants), and they are sufficiently advanced to have developed science, and we ask them the same question, they will (presumably using mathematics, the universal language of the Universe) ALSO answer the same question YES.

The fact that we can even prophesize this (notwithstanding that this is knowledge as it currently exists to the best of our knowledge, which is exactly what science is), is proof that science is mankind’s greatest intellectual accomplishment.

Here is what science IS (it is not airplanes, iPhones, central heating, or vaccines, although each of these is utterly dependent on science):

SCIENCE is a UNIVERSAL platform for the discovery of OBJECTIVE TRUTH

The LANGUAGE of science is not English (or Chinese, or Sanskrit, or Arabic) but is mathematics – a UNIVERSALLY INVARIANT language.

Thus, even though we have never visited it, we can say with ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE that the forces holding together the furthest star in the universe are the SAME FOUR forces holding together the Earth, namely the strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces.