Eye in the Sandstorm, Sand in the Eye

There are two broad kinds of problems in science, writes Siddhartha Mukherjee in The Song of the Cell. He calls the first category the “eye in the sandstorm” problem. That’s the kind of field where there is immense confusion (the sandstorm) and no pattern or map on how to navigate exists.

“Quantum theory serves as a good example…. A shifted paradigm about this atomic/ subatomic world was required to get out of the sandstorm.”

 

The second category is the inverse of the above, what he calls the “sand in the eye” problem.

“Everything makes perfect sense, except one ugly fact that just won’t fit the beautiful theory. It irritates the scientist like a sand grain lodged in the eye – why, why, she asks herself, won’t this one irritating contradictory fact go away?”

He uses that as the runway to explain such a problem from the world of neurons, but that requires you to read the book to understand things. So I will cite an easily understandable example from the world of physics – when Mercury’s orbit wouldn’t fit perfectly into Newton’s beautiful theory, it ultimately got explained as part of Einstein’s famous theory of relativity.

 

Interesting categorization of problems, it paints a vivid picture.