I do not often - if ever - cite quotations from living persons. There is clearly a certain finality about utterances from those who can utter no more. (And who can no longer change their minds about what they have said.) However, here I make an exception having come across the following from the physicist Carlo Rovelli (b. 1956), in my notes:
This is what science is about: exploring new ways of conceptualising the world.
As usual, the quotations I cite are those with which I heartily agree. This time, in doing so, I am sure to be recontextualising. As a physicist, Rovelli is exploring new ways of conceptualising the physical world - and probably the whole universe. (Sometimes physicists have used ‘world’ as shorthand for ‘universe’.)
As a human biologist, I consider myself to be exploring new ways of conceptualising what I consider to be the most interesting thing in the universe: ourselves as physical - and conscious, self-reflecting - entities.
Any science that explores new ways of conceptualising its objects of interest is doing more nuts-and-bolts, mechanistic science. It is trying to go beyond the obvious and understand the meaning of things.
