“No, no, you’re not thinking; you’re just being logical.”

– Niels Bohr

When I first read this, I thought, ‘wait a minute…how can a physicist think that being logical is not thinking?’  Isn’t that what science is all about — being logical?  I remember studying Logic in my college days, and I remember that it felt very scientific in its method of only allowing known information as part of the data that was used to arrive at a conclusion.  It is a good discipline to learn, because it is a tool we can use to understand how the world works.  It allows us to remove our emotions from decision-making that should be approached dispassionately in order for us to end up with a reliable result.  ”If I go outside on a rainy day and do not take an umbrella, I will get wet.”  This is the sort of thing we need to learn about the world, especially if we want to stay dry.

The thing I like about Science, though, is the way it grows only when we think beyond the boundaries of the things we already know.  Einstein and Bohr taught us to see matter as more than just “solid, liquid, or gas.”  Like electrons in the outer orbit of an atom, they used the energy of their thinking to reach beyond known boundaries and discover new truths.  I can just feel my electrons buzzing when I look at the world through my inner microscope and realize that I am not only a lump of solid matter, but many particles of matter that are joined together by energy.  Imagine a time when we knew that a forest was made up of trees, but we didn’t know that trees were composed of cells or that cells were composed of molecules.  We couldn’t have imagined that sugar had carbon as a component.  When I was in elementary school, I remember thinking that atoms were the smallest particles that existed.  Then we learned about the parts of an atom — the nucleus, and the electrons and protons that determined the atom’s charge and its stability.

Now we hear about quarks, tiny particles that exist in the nucleus of the atom.  It is only logical to assume that we still are discovering the true nature of our world.  As the lens becomes more and more keenly focused, and as we apply our new learning to the things we observe, we begin to understand the concept of “infinite.”  We have scratched the surface of knowing and reached a point of “knowing about” our world.  In our dealings with people, as well as with things, let’s remember to keep our minds open, to think beyond the things we absolutely know, and to be open to new discoveries.  We are only beginning to learn how all the energy in the universe connects.  And logic may have nothing to do with it — we just may have to think.