Starry Night

Leaving a Cambria restaurant tonight after sharing good food and better conversation
I heard someone say, "Hey guys, just look at those stars!"
Just casual talk among friends, I thought at the time.

Further considering her last four words, "look at those stars," I was reminded of a link emailed to my son last night:

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-revolutionary-theory-dark.html

If you're not in the mood to wade through this mildly technical but laughably stupid justification for our lack of scientific knowledge, here's my interpretation:

Science, circa 1300 AD:

 

Leave a pool of fresh water and come back in a month.

You will find algae, pond scum, tad poles--maybe even frogs.

Because the knowledge of the day has no way to account for this event (and because the human mind cannot abide the unknown much less tolerate any phenomena without perceivable cause and affect), you give it a name: "spontaneous generation".  And you do so because anything that can be named or labeled is less threatening and, therefore, more controllable.

Good enough for the middle ages.

Science today:

 

You can't account for the way billions of stars and galaxies behave the way they do--unless the universe contains 80 percent more matter than can actually be observed or measured-- so you give this discrepancy a name: "Dark Matter".  

And doing so makes the scientific community, physicists especially, feel better. 
I wonder if the word "magic" might do as well. 

It was, after all, good enough for the middle ages...

But sometimes, I look at a starry sky and think "God" works even better.