Foolish speculation - a placeholder for truth.

This blog is full of speculation. It is not scientific at all. Most of the time, the speculations themselves are silly. Some might call even foolish. But it suddenly occurred to me, all this time these silly speculations, were indeed serving a great purpose. They work as placeholders for the truth, otherwise which could have just been an empty void.

Imagine life about 2000 years ago in the greatest emperor on earth. In ancient Rome. With great monuments and victorious streets full of people. Yet, if you compared a commoner from that era to the one from today, we could see who has more speculations. We have free information, accessible to everyone about even the latest advancements of science. We can go back in reasoning, most of the things until we reach to the edge of the modern science. Even philosophically we have a vast sea of knowledge accumulated from thousands of thinkers over millennia. So, we can see chances of speculation are less in the mind of the modern man as we are fed with facts most of the time.

There is no time or place for speculation

But this accumulation of information sphere did not happen overnight. If that ancient Greek philosopher, did not ask foolish questions and try to answer them foolishly, nobody would have made a movement of thinking about making better and better answers. So, the idea of everything is made out of water, in that era, is as important as idea of everything is made out of elements and subatomic particles. As the former, acted as a placeholder for someone to question it and speculate more and gave rise to the latter after an experiment and research. Modern science works in a similar way.

It all starts with a hypothesis and speculation

In scientific method we start with a hypothesis. Hypothesis by definition is a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. As you can see it is almost a speculation, except it uses limited evidence available. Now imagine the man in Rome. He does not have limited evidence. So, his life was full of speculation. But they served the function of holding a question, until evidence accumulated for over centuries to properly answer his question.

I can speculate, that even subatomic particles are indefinitely divisible. And there is no future. I can speculate that there is no good or evil in the nature, that it is entirely a human made concept. I can speculate Everything disappears when I am dead. They are not truths themselves. True. But, until I replace them with better hypothesis and better arguments, they will let me keep questioning the assumptions. So, next time when someone comes up with a foolish answer in a meeting, just respect, that they filled a void otherwise would prevail in human knowledge.

Act of speculation itself will create the opportunity.