I think that a major difference between the scientist and the lay person is how they treat the unknown. To the scientist, the unknown is the fabric of life, a constant reminder as to what the job of science is all about. To the lay person, the unknown can be frightening, a black and sinister place, filled with unfriendly monsters.

As one trained as a scientist, I would like to offer my thoughts on dealing with the unknown.

When I was a child, my sister and I had the habit of leaving toys, books, and other miscellaneous items lying on the kitchen table. As the evening meal approached, my mother would collect everything we had left on the table and place all of it into the bottom drawer of a kitchen cabinet next to the stove. Sometimes, having forgotten that I had left something on the table, I'd ask my mother where such-and-such was. She would inevitably ask "Have you looked in the bottom drawer?" Of course, when I searched the bottom drawer, I was always surprised at what I found there.

I think the distinction between scientists and laymen can best be described in allegorical terms of a bottom drawer in ones mind. It is often the case that I wonder why something is the way it is. Or how something came to be the way it is. In many cases, there is no explanation. So rather than worry about something for which I have no answer, I place the thought into the bottom drawer in my mind. There it stays until, at some time in the future, an explanation becomes known. Then I open the drawer and take out that thought. As when I was a child, I am always surprised at the other items in the bottom drawer. If no answer appears, the thought just remains in the bottom drawer. Out of sight. Out of concern.

Lay people, on the other hand, seem to need to know the answer to everything right now. They do not possess a bottom drawer and so cannot put a problem away until it solves itself. Rather, quite often, the layman who cannot find an explanation, places the item into a relationship above nature (i.e. supernatural), History abounds with the folly of this practice. What do you say to those who persecuted people who believed that the Earth was round? Or that the Sun is at the center of our solar system? Or any number of other "heresies."

Without a bottom drawer, I fear that otherwise rational men will perform irrational acts.