The right, the wrong and the relatively...

There is some pleasure in listening to your own thoughts expressed by someone else. Most of the time, if not always, we are pleased when someone agrees with us. Or believes in something we believe in. Especially so, if it is for the same reasons. Maybe it is some sort of ego thing in human beings. Or maybe it is the selfish meme at work. While I am not generally a fan of people who always agree with me (which is obviously impossible), it does give me pleasure sometimes when somebody thinks the exact same thing that I do. And when that someone has put it down on paper many many years ago, it is a real pleasure for me to read it. More so, when that someone is already one of my most favorite authors.

And even more so, when what he has written is something related to what I wrote on my blog earlier. So, today when I came across this article by Asimov about the "Relativity of wrong", I was very happy when I reached paragraph 17 ("Now where do we..."), because this was so related to one of my previous posts. (This one!)

While you are reading the post, one warning though. At first glance these two links might not seem related at all.. But here is how they are related, at least in my perspective. 

My post is about why we do not always have the right answer. About the need for us to realize that many answers in life are not clearly 'right' or 'wrong', unlike the spelling of sugar in Asimov's example (paragraph 19). And Asimov's question "Where do we learn that right and wrong are absolutes?" is  a very pertinent one. It is surprising how we always think that 'right' is something fixed or static (and we do that all the more when we become engineers, what with all the emphasis on mathematical precision...). But if we look at it, it is just a notion we get in our childhoods. And Asimov does a brilliant job of explaining how this is not so; how there are degrees of right, for example.

The other reason I find the article relevant is because, it makes a good addendum to mine (Ya right! Asimov writing an addendum to "my" post! What arrogance I must possess!! ...  Anyway..). While it is true that right and wrong are not absolute, and that there are questions for which we might never know if our answers are right, there is some room for hope. Maybe our answers shall never be 100% right. But they would still be more right than our previous answer. Even though our answers may be wrong, what gives meaning to our journey is the fact that "each tomorrow finds us farther than today"*. And that, to me, is the whole pleasure of science- the unending quest of  unraveling this mysterious universe, little by little, each day...

* This line, by Longfellow, is part of the same poem from which the "Bottomline" of this blog is taken.. One of the most amazing poems ever written...