As human beings, we have our physical body to receive sensory information.
We can make an overview of our environment. We see, hear, feel, smell and taste. The tuning of the sensory organs is towards information that is useful for us to survive as well as to develop oneself in this environment. We add all kind of additional valuation to that information. We like or dislike some of it, get interested in specific details and are open for further attention. Scientists are free to study and investigate questions of their interest but will have limitations in funding their activities. Most of the scientific attention tunes into areas of public interest. Nobody is anxious to contribute to get an answer to a weird question. However, there is a general quest for answers to short-term issues. We want a better weather forecast, but only for a foreseeable period. A costly study for a precise forecast for over 100 years does not get easy funding. It is maybe intriguing for an individual scientist, but who cares? We very well understand that our scientific projections have a limited scope.
There is much interest in Particle Physics, and a vast amount of money is spent to prepare for experiments that could give answers to our existentialistic questions. Though it is not done to introduce metaphysical considerations, we have no problem to nickname the Higgs boson as the “God particle” to attract attention for funding.
The study in this field tunes into the tiniest particles we can identify included their behavior over extremely short timeframes. These frames are in order of magnitude of some 10ˉ¹⁵ sec. Short timeframes for our human appreciation, but relevant compared with TPlanck. Nevertheless, by setting the terms of reference for such a study, we inherently have to accept that it will be very difficult to expand the impact of what we observe to our daily reality of days and years. Despite Impressive achievements, we still must be humble in claims that we have revealed underlying secrets.
It is imperative that we continue in getting a better understanding of the physical world we are living in and by no means, we must question the intentions of scientists. However, it is obvious that we inherently work with massive amounts of unknown inherent assumptions in whatever we claim as a better understanding of reality. Claiming success for reasons of continuation of funding can act counterproductive and disrupt factual progress.
The question must be asked: we need to celebrate success, but are we making serious progress in unraveling underlying secrets?