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You have to be patient kids. You are not allowed to open your presents before midnight. If you do, Albert Einstein will not be happy. What ? You don’t believe anymore in Albert Einstein ? You don’t believe it would be possible for someone to know everything and to deliver gifts everywhere in one night by going faster than light ? Of course, you have grown up. Just like mankind.
But do you know at least why you don’t have to go to school this week ?
After millenniums of fear, uncertainty and doubt, mankind woke up one day and discovered the scientific method. This was (and still is) a revolution that changed the world and our vision. It allowed men to walk on the moon then on Mars, to understand a bit more of the universe every day, to face life and death without fearing old superstition, to make love how and when they want with who they want, to fight diseases, to work everyday to the construction of a better future for our children, to get rid of spam on the Internet. We have learned to respect each others, to respect our planet, to not be upset because someone is thinking differently and to not use closed proprietary communication protocols.
Of course, at first, scientific method was used to build deadly weapons but minds were changing and people were shocked by the use of those weapons. Death penalty was seen more and more as a crime than justice. People even understood that our planet itself had to be respected, that trolling on slashdot was useless.
As with any change, there was a strong opposition of people fighting, even killing, in order to prove that their superstition was the truth (at that time, people still believed in the truth as being one and unique). Those people were trying to ban anything new that was allowed by the rise of scientific method. Depending of the economic situation, there were stronger in some periods, weaker in others. But, in the average, they weakened, leaving more time for important stuff like space exploration, artistic creation, efficient technology, Xkcd reading or trying to run 100m in less than 9s.
Because any excuse to party is good, it was decided to celebrate the scientific method. The chosen day was the 25th of December, birthday of Isaac Newton, one of the most famous scientific. He’s sometime considered as the father of the modern Science. That day also coincided more or less with the solstice, seen as a rebirth of the Sun in most ancient cultures from the northern hemisphere.
The legend says that Newton discovered the law of gravitation by looking at an apple falling from a tree. Consequently, the tradition was set to put a tree in your house and decorate it with apples. Around year 1800, there was a bad apple harvest in Germany and France. People decided to make some fake apples with glass and other materials. That why we have glass balls on the tree and, like Isaac Newton, we pretend receiving apples on the head and we sing newtonmas songs.
But don’t forget that it’s not Newton only. It’s the celebration of every scientist, every free thinker and everyone you love. The legend is that Albert Einstein himself put under the tree a gift for every good child, riding a beam of light across the world and entering houses with the help of quantum tunnelling. He is also called Father Newtonmas, Santa Claus or Socrates, depending the country and the size of the beard.
I know that it’s a bit difficult to accept that he doesn’t exist. Don’t be sad. There’s an age for everything. You will soon discover that the world itself is beautiful, that you don’t need to believe in it, you just have to open your eyes and enjoy it.
Well, I guess I’m pretty boring. Now you can open your gifts.
Merry 500th Newtonmas, children of the earth.
The Happy Newtonmas 2142 ! by Lionel Dricot, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Belgium License.
You have way to much trust in the scientific method. There is a lot of things it cannot do or explain (for instance why xkcd is so funny or if there is a god or not). It’s just a way of studying systematic, repeatable things. Not everything in this world is systematic and/or repeatable (fortunately).
Here is a nice quote on that topic:
"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done." – Sir Isaac Newton
You are my new hero for this. Thank you for publishing it.
Oh, and Walther – there is a difference between the concepts of "prove" and "explain". Science does explain why God almost certainly doesn’t exist, it just can’t prove it.
Just passing by… Anyway, I don’t think humans have walked on Mars yet. We’re still at least a decade from that. It’s just the probe thing for now.
@Daniel
"Science does explain why God almost certainly doesn’t exist, it just can’t prove it."
Science does not explain things it cannot prove. The scientific method observes things and we can recognize patterns in that. We think up a theory and if it explains enough available data we consider it proven (I left out some steps).
If you ask science if God exists, but you have no way of taking experiments or observations, it will just say "I don’t know". It’s just not a scientific question. There are a lot of relevant questions in this world that are not scientific questions. For instance: "Does your mother love you?", "Who killed JFK?" and "Does God exist?"
You are right in the sense that we don’t need God to explain lightning or why the moon doesn’t fall down onto the earth. But I don’t think we needed God for that anyway.
Well said indeed! Merry Newtonmass — double-s because it actually has some substance to it
\d
@Walther: "too much trust in the scientific method"??!!
it is pretty much the only tool that humanity has for understanding reality, and the scientific method has been so incredibly successful in doing that, that it is the one thing humans should have reverence for.
there are plenty of non-scientific things in the world, fortunately, but that is so obvious that there is no need to clarify it. I think it is a great thing that there are a few persons out there that celebrate science and its achievements. why do you want to belittle that?
@HCI
You are right: the scientific method is a great invention. By "too much trust", I meant applying it to things it cannot be applied to. It’s power comes from limiting itself to patterns, but it will therefore only see patterns, not unique things.
It is not the only tool for understanding reality, it is a tool for finding patterns in reality. It does not cover all of reality and it doesn’t explain it. It merely describes (which is basically what Newton says in that quote).
I did not mean to belittle anyone. I just wanted to point out that science is not everything.
yet again you are belittling science this time by using the power of semantics.
there is a huge difference between describing a phenomena: "the apple is falling", and explaining it "a force is acting on the apple, blah blah".
yes, there are plenty of things about the human experience that are of no interest to science, reason and logic, but those ‘unique’ things are precisely the ones that are not worth explaining (why people enjoy fart jokes? how interesting)
maybe in the future science will be able to explain why the universe is the way it is. right know science doesn’t know and therefore nobody knows. And that is precisely the point.
also you have failed to say what other tools we have to understand reality. I think that apart from reason, we only have this pixdaus.com/single.php?id…
@HCI
Ok, the fart jokes may not be that interesting, but what humor is and why I find certain things funny is very interesting. Or why do people love each other? Or why do I find that painting beautiful? Why are we here?
Maybe I was trying to belittle science, just to put in into perspective. I was just trying to say it has limited authority. People sometimes belittle reality to be just that which is observable by science. There is much more to it.
Here is another tool to understand reality: just live and enjoy life. How come older people know more about life than younger people? Not because they read more scientific books, but becaused they lived more years on this earth.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a physicist and science is great. Science tells us a lot about how reality works. Science has given us great technological improvements. But the things I really enjoy in life are not scientific (except the more fun parts of my job). I was just responding to the OP that seemed to suggest that the scientific method would give us a better future. It will in a technological way, but it is not a solution to all problems. It will not end all wars, it will not teach us to respect each other.
"…that seemed to suggest that the scientific method would give us a better future. It will in a technological way, but it is not a solution to all problems. It will not end all wars, it will not teach us to respect each other"
ok. I see what you mean and I agree with you. what I understood from what Lionel wrote is that with scientific progress and the understanding of human nature that comes with it, we have also social progress (women equality, gay rights) as a by-product, because science has allowed some societies to get rid of the bondage of religion and all its superstitions. and I agree with that as well.
Hi… just passing by, I would like to say that THERE IS a lot of scientific research about what things make us enjoy or having fun, there is a lot of research about why your mom loves you, and, of COURSE, it is possible in theory to scientifically discern who killed JFK if you access the relevant data… I mean, you knew that, or not??
That’s related with the question "will scientific progress give us social and human progress? will take us more near to happyness?"
I think the question is obviously related to the narrowess of our concept of "science".
> “The chosen day was the 25th of December, birthday of Isaac Newton, one of the most famous scientific”
A true scientific loves truth above all:
“Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643 […]. At the time of Newton’s birth, England had not adopted the Gregorian calendar and therefore his date of birth was recorded as Christmas Day, 25 December 1642.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_…