Are we observing to far?

[ALine]

When it comes to physics I do not nor will I ever claim to be an expert. Only a curious explorer of knowledge for the application of developing ideas. My question, as stated in the title, is are we observing down too far. Meaning that why are we attempting to go smaller or bigger scale wise when it comes to understanding physics? By this I mean why are we, by we I mean science in general, trying to find an ultimate answer or a theory of everything? Why try and put puzzle pieces that do not fit together , together? I feel as if I already "know" the answer, however I feel as if I do not "understand" the answer. 

[iNow]

One can use a paint roller on a wall. One can equally use that same paint roller on detailed objects... handheld toys, canvas art depicting trees and shrubs, and other similarly fine grained items.

However, the paint roller is not the right tool for those smaller items. You need a brush, and even then, a specific brush type to accurately represent the object.

Continuing with the painting analogy, the roller is great and plays a big role in our abilities... it allows you to paint the forest, but it's not the best tool for other painting needs... not for the trees or the branches or individual leaves and needles and life living upon it. We need both. A roller for some jobs and a fine brush for others.

So, we can look at the forest (you painting with the roller as noted in your OP... "understand big picture"), and we can look at the trees (us understanding at finer and finer granular detail the individual components). We can and should do both. Both is better than one alone.

Similar analogies apply to cutting with a sword versus cutting with a scalpel, or shooting with a cannon versus shooting with a laser... Same idea...

We must do both, and a better question to you is: Why the hell wouldn't we want to learn more and ensure our models of reality become increasingly accurate with each passing day?

Edited January 2, 2019 by iNow

[ALine]

9 minutes ago, iNow said:

We must do both, and a better question to you is: Why the hell wouldn't we want to learn more and ensure our models of reality become increasingly accurate with each passing day?

 

[studiot]

36 minutes ago, ALine said:

When it comes to physics I do not nor will I ever claim to be an expert. Only a curious explorer of knowledge for the application of developing ideas. My question, as stated in the title, is are we observing down too far. Meaning that why are we attempting to go smaller or bigger scale wise when it comes to understanding physics? By this I mean why are we, by we I mean science in general, trying to find an ultimate answer or a theory of everything? Why try and put puzzle pieces that do not fit together , together? I feel as if I already "know" the answer, however I feel as if I do not "understand" the answer. 

 

I think this is a very fair question which we need to bear in mind to keep research activity in proportion in all the different areas of Science.  +1

In my opinion, for instance, the proportion of cosmology activity is overdone these days.

 

That said, I have just been explaining  brownian motion, settlemnt of suspensions and the interaction between regimes of particles of different sizes to a budding Pharmacist.

So even though we need to concentrate our efforts at everyday scales, these interact with regimes operating at greater or lesser scales so we need to have some study of these as well.

For the extremes, I think it's like the study of Latin.
Someone should do it, but not everyone.

 

[ALine]

I don't know and I can never say that I will ever know. But I want to know so it gives me something to wake up to in the mourning. A purpose or meaning. Like trying to find the end of the rainbow. I think that I am questioning too much of the reasoning behind science without even doing science. 

Personal side note - I think the magic at the end of the rainbow is from collecting pieces of gold on your way down and up. And once you reach the end you realize that the magic was in the journey all along and now you can go back and look at the beauty of what you have done in order to make something new and unique like exploring the universe in order to make a new one.