Not everything can be explained using logic or science.

Steve had a very interesting seminar last semester. The tutor posted a theoretical problem and asked if we could use any scientific method to solve it.

Assuming that each year we will meet someone and if we asked that someone to marry us, that someone will say yes. The distribution is random; one year it could be the partner that we dream of in our dreams, the following year could be someone average and the next year could the person we dream about in nightmares. There is no way of telling what we will get the next year. Yet at the end of the year, we have to make a decision.

If we choose not to ask that person, we will never meet him/her again and the scenario repeats itself year in, year out until we reach the age of 60 and we die or if we ask the person to marry us, whichever comes first. Since most of us can only marry one person, there is a danger that we might miss out on someone better or worse, passing up on the best of the lot. Faced with such a dilemma, we have to come up with a method to make our decision.

The best solution proposed by the class was settling on the mean that we were willing to accept. We would then find out the variation from the mean we were willing to accept. Anything that falls between the +/- variation from the mean would be within the acceptable range and should be taken. Yet this can only be done in an ideal world.

In reality, we seldom meet someone that we think might be suitable for us on an annual basis, much less day to day. There are 6 billion people in the world (currently) and assuming that there is an equal proportion of each gender, there are 3 billion potential couples. Less the homosexuals, those who have taken a vow of celibacy, those who are already taken and those who are not of age (infants, toddlers or dying), assuming that there is someone out there that is for us, that means that our chance of meeting the perfect someone has the odds of say, 1 in roughly 900 million. There are better odds on winning the lottery.

How does science, for all its purported ability to solve our problems, help in reducing these odds? Rational thinking and logic simply cannot help us either. If rational thinking and logic cannot help us solve our problem of the affairs of the heart, then there should be no such things as rules as well.

Science is our way of trying to make sense of what is happening around us.