Occam’s Razor is a well know principle that says that the simplest solution is likely the correct solution. There is some debate as to the translation and what Occam truly meant, while there is wide agreement that searching for solutions and answers that are simplistic is a worthy pursuit.
Contrast that to CERN, the largest machine ever built by humankind. 70 countries have collectively spent tens of billions constructing and operating it since its inception in 1954. An underground tube, 27 kilometers in circumference is used to spin particles in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light and then crashing them into each other to see what happens.
Its purpose? Essentially to figure out the nature of matter.
The complexity of CERN is beyond comprehension. Some 15,000 scientists work there. The brightest most learned of the learned. Those who speak in a language that sounds like gibberish to the lot of us. And all this to use physical experimentation to explain matter in a non-physical Universe.
In 2012 CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, the famed “God Particle” that is necessary to explain how matter gets its mass. The official announcement? That the results were “compatible with the Higgs boson.” Then ten months later a CERN’s spokesman clarified, “[T]o me, it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is.”
Translation: they are measuring test results with statistical algorithms to draw conclusions. The scientists get in rooms together, pouring over probability curves, and debate for endless hours and days as to what the numbers are saying. Then they write papers about it furthering the debate. But they don’t really know.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to the DEEPER side of things to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.