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“Dimensions of Human Ignorance”

According to the noted biologist and research scientist Lewis Thomas, M.D., man should have a greater sense of wonderment about creation around him. The U.S. national museum’s “Smithsonian” magazine observes that Thomas’ writings stress “how little we humans yet know about the world. The dimensions of human knowledge, he reminds us, are dwarfed by the dimensions of human ignorance.”

In an interview with the “Smithsonian,” Thomas noted that now “there is much more puzzlement about the laws of nature than there was a century ago.” Illustrating this, he related: “Lord Kelvin, a leading figure in physics at the turn of the century, said that physics was now finished and that if he were a young man he wouldn’t go into physics because there was nothing more to be done except tidy up a few things. Then along came quantum theory and relativity and quantum mechanics and all the rest.

“I suspect that there will be no end to this process, being the insatiably curious species that we are, exploring, looking around and trying to understand things. We’re not ever going to get it solved. I can’t imagine any terminal point where everyone will breathe a sigh and will say, ‘Now we understand the whole thing.’ It’s going to remain beyond us. . . . We’re studying nature at a much closer hand than we could ever study before. And instead of getting clearer and easier to understand, it’s harder to understand.”

“Smithsonian” interviewer Timothy Ferris then recalled what Thomas had written about how humans should react to the marvels they see. “Talking about embryology, about the brain coming into existence from what was at one point a single embryonic cell, you write, ‘People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours, calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell!’” And should not that wonderment and talking extend also to the One who designed that marvelous cell?​—April 1980, pages 127-142.