Awe in the face of the infinite?

Scientists get accused of hubris when we're actually guilty of arrogance born of experience. This is permissable; it's called "confidence" in kinder circles. It is an awful, awesome, baffling world we inhabit; don't deny it. A scientist faced with the infinite or near-infinite will only remain a scientist with a practiced (over)confidence that convinces her that she can, with diligence and method, figure out some little thing or other, get a grip on a cosmically-trivial piece of What There Is. That is rightly something to be proud of. The important part is that this confidence should exist in the mind alongside an appreciation of the fearsome context, the biggest of all big pictures. After all, the alternative is to be in shock and awe, to give up and wave your hands in the air saying "It's too hard" or "Something I can't understand moved in a mysterious way and I'm outta here". That is contrary to the nature of a Compleat Scientist.

It's a form of arrogance because, faced with All There Is, it would be an entirely reasonable--though selfish--response to huddle against the fire with your back to the darkness. It's not hubris because that presupposes the existence of something to set your mortal face against when, in fact, there is no barrier to our understanding except a lack of effort and a lack of facility on our part. No Higher Being holds the keys and will smite us puny upstarts mightily for attempting to pick the lock. Whether you believe in a god or not, I hope that your god does not forbid mentally acute animals from using the traits this god of yours allegedly conferred upon them i.e. us. If he does, how does he command your respect? Aren't you just being bullied and condescended to? Don't you like that question? Feel free to sit back down close to the fire then.

There's such a lot to glimpse (and maybe one day grok). Such a lot! Look up; look down; look around; look inside: it's too much for our tiny, savannah-evolved, moment-aware, decades-persisting minds to hold. Consider any one of those attempts to present just the solar system at a comprehensible scale (including mine). Consider those attempts to provide a mental image of what a cell is, or a quantum-scale particle, or any other conceptual metaphor. Consider the attempts to metaphorize[17] the lengths of time since the dinosaurs died. Try and get your head around Euler's Identity, a provably true mathematical formula that doesn't make sense. It's all too much, too big, too long, too hard, too weird. But giving up and turning back to the cosy warm fire (that could one day gutter out…) is inimical to the Compleat Scientist. It's okay to be awed by the infinite but not to be cowed by it.

The right thing is to be stimulated rather than daunted. Then you do something, pit your tiny mind against it and perhaps get an answer. That, to the Compleat Scientist, is a better course of action than the alternative -- staring transfixed into the onrushing headlights of Eternity. If that's arrogance then scientists are arrogant, must be arrogant. I prefer to think of it as heroic engagement with a truly inhuman universe. It takes chutzpah, stones, cheek, gumption, nerve, call it what you will.

So you do need to experience awe in the face of the universe[27], so long as your response is to be galvanized rather than paralysed.