I have saved this quotation from Intuition, by R. Buckminster Fuller, for many years. So delicious! So true! So liberating, for those still under the thrall of the delusion that “science” defines reality. The free-form verse is a little strange at first, but then you realize that, if written out as prose, his thought would be much harder to follow.
While one percent of society
has superficial awareness
of the existence of mathematical regularities
synergetically displayed by mass attraction
and supersynergetically displayed as precession,
no scientist has the slightest idea
what mass attraction is
nor why
synergy, precession, or radiation
exists or acts as they do.
Nobel laureate physicists,
in self-conscious defense
of this abruptly discovered ignorance
in regard to such cosmically important matters
(understanding knowledge of which
society has accredited them with possessing)
shrug off the necessity to explain
by saying “Here we will have to assume
some angels to be pushing things around.”
Though popularly unrealized,
it is in experimental evidence
that the origins of science
are inherently immersed
in an a priori mystery.
-R. Buckminster Fuller, Intuition