Manifesto

• policy
• argh

The world is filled with people who know next to nothing about human discovery in the last 3000 years. We might as well be living in the middle ages, were it not for the tinny beeps of mobile phones. They're quick enough to use the technology, but understanding why it works is pointless, and even if you did try, it'd be impossible. Engines are fine, but engineers aren't.

Such disinterest is deeply distressing to me, and makes me a pariah at parties once I mention what I do. People take a large step backwards and say 'Ooh, you must be dead brainy. I could never do that sort of thing.' Why is it so unthinkable to know how the world works?

I mean, noone expects you to understand all of it. In fact, I don't think it's even possible. But sometimes, for some things.. wouldn't it be nice to know whether, for example, the outcome you get is inevitable, or just bad luck? How you could change it? Whether it would be different if you did it on a different planet? If it's always been like that, and if it could ever change? These are the sort of things children want to know, and parents shrug off the enquiries because they don't know the answers. And if you never get an answer, then why keep asking? I'm not blaming the parents (on this occasion), but people learn to stop asking and start accepting that that's just the way things are instead of asking how, and how that fits with everything else.

There are lots of inexplicable things. It would be astounding if there were always answers. But, in the face of that, to decide not to answer any, and look askance at people who do, is just Weird. And decidedly unambitious.

So I'm going to explain a few of the things I do know here, as and when they come up. Also featuring will be some general principles of the world and the science behind it, in the hope you can apply some of this stuff to your own interpretation of the world, or at least hold your own when blathering at particularly dull dinner parties.

And why am I qualified to do this? I am the sort of physicist who watches the turbulent flow in her Irish coffee, and analyses the forces acting on me on rollercoasters. I try to understand the world through metaphor and unexpected extrapolation. I explain quantum physics in bars, cosmology on buses and Schrödinger's cat to my mum. I'm not sure this is a qualification, but if you're prepared to read it I'm prepared to write it. Deal?