I recently read an article about the asteroid that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The latest theory is that it was a water rich asteroid from beyond Jupiter. The scientists claim the previous theory was incorrect (caused by a comet) because no comets they are aware of contains ruthenium, a rare element. As I read the article I thought back to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. If you’re not familiar with the story it tells of a group of blind men trying to describe an elephant. Each of the blind men feel a different part of the elephant and announce that it is like what they felt. Depending on what part of the elephant they touched they individually came up with the theory that an elephant was like a rope, a tree, a snake, a wall, etc.
Theories are great, but explaining the universe or even what happened on Earth three billion years ago, or 50 million years ago, or 10,000 years ago is still speculation based on the limited knowledge that we have today. A little over a hundred years ago scientific theory believed that diseases came from ‘bad air”, another that the universe was unchanging and infinite; diseases could be cured by draining some of the bad blood from a person’s system. It doesn’t take centuries or millennia for new scientific facts or theory to change. Now theories seem to be changed as often as you might change your clothes.
Robert Heinlein is often referred to as a futurist. Many of his visions of the near future became a reality. More than science I believe that science fiction results in the evolution of things to come. Science in and of itself seems more focused on what cannot be rather than what can be. Example, based on mathematical theories we cannot travel faster than the speed of light or we will turn into a bolt of lightening (or energy). Rather than limiting what we are and what we can be we need to move beyond scientific theories that have their foundation on the toenail of the elephant.