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Groping and stumbling toward knowledge
A century ago we were realizing that fundamental physics might still hold more mysteries than we had thought. From my ongoing reading in both medicine and microbiology it is increasingly obvious that there is still very much that we don't yet know about the life sciences. An outcome of many worthwhile experiments appears to be evidence that our model of how things are remains far too simple: we are often given cause to rethink our previous ideas. People may look back on our understanding as being relatively primitive but I think they will be sympathetic: our experimental techniques, especially in microbiology, are inventive and are advancing rapidly but the underlying phenomena are so complex that we get but a blurred view of just some aspects and guess what we can from those.
The above will be no surprise to some. I think that part of the issue is the authority with which medical organizations issue their good-faith wisdom only to change their advice a decade or two later, just as now we have a dietary rethink occurring about fat and carbohydrates; also efforts like the Human Genome Project, perhaps to win funding and to look good in the press, felt to me oversold in how much further ahead we would be once they were complete. They provide another important part of the story but there are so many interlocking parts.
The above will be no surprise to some. I think that part of the issue is the authority with which medical organizations issue their good-faith wisdom only to change their advice a decade or two later, just as now we have a dietary rethink occurring about fat and carbohydrates; also efforts like the Human Genome Project, perhaps to win funding and to look good in the press, felt to me oversold in how much further ahead we would be once they were complete. They provide another important part of the story but there are so many interlocking parts.