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user-inactivated  ·  2085 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Trial wipes out more than 80 per cent of disease-spreading mozzie

    barbaric

That was the word I was originally gonna use, but opted against, for fear of sounding like I'm being critical of scientists and medical professionals.

As to the rest of what you said, that same book also touches on that a bit as well, but in a different way. It seems in science, we have a desire to break down concepts to granular, almost elemental levels, in hopes that in understanding the parts, we'll have a better understanding of the whole. To which, there is some good deal of logic behind that. The point the author brought up though, is that sometimes when the parts interact with each other, the result is often completely different from what we would expect. The example he used was that hydrogen and oxygen, on their own, act in a very certain way, combined though, water has completely different properties. So while granular understanding is important, a wider, more holistic understanding is also important.