Science: Solving Mysteries One Clue at a Time
This past Tuesday, something mysterious and amazing happened. My wife noticed a strange deposit into our bank account; a large deposit: $1,400. She asked when I was supposed to be paid for something I was working on and I told her not until later. This deposit piqued both our curiosities. What was it? Why was it in there? Who put it there? I started investigating; researching as much as I could. I was able to find out it was $1,400 cash, which bank branch and what time the money was put in. Paranoid it was some scam perpetrated to clean out our bank account, my wife wanted me to call the bank to inquire. So, Wednesday morning, I called. Long story short, my wife received a call Wednesday afternoon from a bank employee saying someone anonymously deposited money in our account because they thought we should have it. What? To say the least, we were humbled and astonished. The curiosity has not gone away. We are still trying to figure out who this saint(s) is.
This mystery made me think; it is eerily like the field of science. The path to discovery in any science discipline begins with something very simple, an observation. My wife observed a strange deposit into our bank account. Observations lead to curiosity and ultimately yield questions. What was this deposit? Why was it there? Who put it there? Explanations or answers to the questions are developed. These explanations, or hypotheses, have their validity tested through experiment or some action. My wife’s initial explanation was that someone deposited it to somehow gain access to our account to clean it out. My action of calling the bank to report the deposit as not originating from the wife or myself was partly to make sure the deposit was legitimate and not some clever scam. Through experiment or action, facts are gathered to support the explanations or rule them out. The fact a bank employee called to let us know the deposit was from an anonymous ‘Good Samaritan’ ruled out the hypothesis of the scam. Scientific discovery ultimately leads to more observations, curiosity, questions, and hypotheses.
For my wife and I, the discovery that someone thought so highly of us to give us any amount of money has only fueled the mystery. The main question now is, who did it? Unlike any good mystery, or science for that matter, we may never find out.
This post is dedicated to my family’s ‘Good Samaritan’. Thank you…
