What would your life be like if you knew everything? While it would be nice to remember everyone’s names and not have to study for tests, knowing everything has its drawbacks, too. You’d no longer feel surprised, curious, or filled with wonder. And, you'd miss out on getting to know people, asking hard and big questions, and the joy of learning new things.
Our speaker today knows firsthand all the good that not knowing can bring. In fact, he’s made a career out of it. Jonathan Feng (U.C. Irvine) is a theoretical physicist researching one of the biggest unknowns in the scientific world: dark matter. In this Forum event from 2018, Dr. Feng embraces the unknowns of the universe. He discusses how our ignorance can lead us to greater appreciation of the complicated and beautiful world we live in, push us towards humility and curiosity, and, perhaps, help us better know a powerful, creative, loving God.
This Forum was originally titled "The Post Hawking Universe" and was hosted by The Veritas Forum at the University of Southern California.
Science and faith, far from being in conflict, are actually best viewed as two expressions of the same human impulses — namely, to think, to wonder, and to be awed by the world around us.
Everything that we understand, everything that we've seen, everything that makes up the chairs and the air and everything that we know about, is only making up 5% of the universe; 95% of the universe is stuff that we just don't know what it is.
