A lot of effort went into me writing this book, and you reading it.
Just a few years ago we were a bunch of apes hanging out on the savannah. From an evolutionary perspective, it was a blink of an eye, and in a very real sense we are still a bunch of apes. Nothing changed there. You and I were born naked beasts with a hard-wired desire to eat and fuck and avoid pain, animals trapped on a not-so-big planet with other animals, which are, for the most part, better endowed in a physical sense than we are. We are poor runners, pitiful climbers, abysmal fighters, and our fangs and talons are rubbish. We are the nerds of Planet Earth.
And yet one way or another we managed to leave our caves and visit the moon, and now we are making plans to travel further, towards Mars and beyond. We have come a long way, and if we can prevent idiots with too much power from blowing us to smithereens, we still have a long way to go.
What happened in the little less than 14 billion years that passed from the Big Bang to now is extraordinary. But it is even more extraordinary that a bunch of apes are figuring it out.
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Descartes was not alone among his contemporaries in his belief that wonder was only good to start off the journey, not see it through. Scientists were re-enchanting the world by revealing its strangeness, and yet their endgame was to make wonder cease, to answer all questions and master nature. This is an unfortunate view; and it is even more unfortunate that it has somehow survived to this day. This is science gone too far, some might say. I disagree. This is science that hasn’t gone far enough.
A scientist’s training is long and demanding. After spending twenty years shuttling between a university and a lab, working late hours for very little financial reward, you can be forgiven for thinking that your specific way of doing things is the best way there is. It is a handy delusion you use to keep yourself sane. Because of the way science works in practice, because of the byzantine twists and turns of grants and academic careers, scientists need to build their own tunnels, in the same way we all do, in order to get on with life, pay their bills, raise children and put them through university. Exactly like anybody else, they can end up forgetting that those tunnels are shortcuts through reality and not reality itself. They stop questioning what they think they know. They learn that they must look up, and they do so, but then they always look up, and never sideways.
We tend to believe that scientists are the ultimate grown-ups, that they have everything sorted out. But they are not, and they have not. They are people like us, and they are winging it, like us. They are prone to the same mistakes we are prone to, the same delusions of grandeur. The good ones are aware that this problem is inescapable, and they keep applying science’s clever trick – they keep asking questions, and all the more so when the answer seems obvious. Is immortality possible? Do animals have consciousness? What about plants? Sooner or later those questions will lead them to strange, unexpected places they have never seen before. To the stars and beyond.
Scientists and witches use opposite methods to reach the same point, a point where their dearest certainties hold no water. We are going to steal both methods. Life needs to breathe in, breathe out, and we shall alternate between moments when we stop asking questions and moments when we push questions to their extreme limits. We will switch between strategies, so that neither becomes just another deception, just another cage. Breathing in with mystery, breathing out with questioning, your world will be forever new, forever unexpected.
THE WORKOUT
1. The Familiar Unknown
Select an object you use every day, such as your phone, your fridge, your car. Write down in your Book of Wonder what you know for certain about how it works, what you perhaps know, and what you definitely do not know. For example, if it is your phone: how does a signal reach it? How come it can connect to the Internet? What makes a touch screen possible? What is electricity? How is it produced, and how does it reach your home? How does it charge your phone’s battery?
After writing down your list, research all three areas – what you know for sure, what you perhaps know, what you don’t know. It does not need to be a scholarly, in-depth research, but it needs to question even the things you are entirely sure you know.
How much new information did you find out? How many things did you discover you had taken for granted, without really knowing them?
How many more things do you take for granted every day?
2. The Reversal of Obviousness
Write down in your Book of Wonder a very obvious statement. For example: Cats like to play. Then question it. For example: aren’t there individual differences among cats? How can you be sure that the behaviour you define as ‘play’ is, indeed, play? Write down all the things you need to take for granted in order for that statement to hold true. For example:
Most cats are similar, I know exactly what ‘play’ is, humans and animals ‘play’ in similar ways, I have observed enough cats to know what I am saying, cats exist… and so on.
How many of those statements are demonstrably true, when subjected to rational analysis? How many of them could you demonstrate yourself, and how many are beliefs you hold for no good reason?
3. The Rational Moves
Thinking is an undervalued activity. What little thinking we do, we do while on our commute, while doing the dishes, while listening to music. It is very unusual to just sit down and think, without doing anything else. Because of this, our mind has very little training in what it is designed to do.
So we shall do just that. Every day for a week, sit down and think for seven minutes, making a chain of logical statements. Start from something you are absolutely certain of: for example, that you are sitting in your room. Then think of something you can safely deduce from what you just thought. For example, that if you are sitting in your room, then you must have a chair.
Be careful, and question this second statement thoroughly. For example, could you not be sitting on the floor?
When you come up with a second statement that satisfies you, move on to the next one. Continue the same chain for the seven days of the exercise, picking up every time from where you left off the last time.
You might notice that it becomes extremely difficult to keep focusing on the chain of thoughts. You will be tempted to check your phone, to stand up and make tea, and you will notice your thoughts drifting away. When this happens, gently bring yourself back to the exercise.
Each time, make notes in your Book of Wonder as soon as the seven minutes are up.
On the last day, look back at your journey – how far did you travel from your first statement?
4. The Daily Problems
Every day for a week, write down in your Book of Wonder three things you don’t know. For example: how the human brain works, how birds navigate during migration, why we age. It does not matter how banal or oddball the things are – it is your list and nobody is going to look at it and judge you for it.