The one where Xin wishes she was studying something else

Sometimes the human body just doesn't make any sense. The science of the way biological processes work is almost as incongruent as trying to decipher the varied motives and workings of the human mind.

Case in point, free radical damage causes mitochondrial and cellular damage that leads to aging. Anti-oxidants reduce free radical damage by eliminating free radicals through chemical reactions. Logically speaking, you'd suppose that reducing free radicals by increasing antioxidant levels would reduce free radical damage. However as antioxidants reduce free radicals, hormesis may occur. This is an increased sensitivity as a result of a reduction in the body's natural protection against free radicles that may actually result in an increased mortality.

I suppose it's the frustration of a posteriori acquisition of knowledge and understanding. At best, you can only see one or two steps behind the rationale of the way something has changed, and that means that the fundamental logic of how things work will always remain somehow behind the veil. Just like no matter how well or how long you've known someone, you never really know them.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm motivated to wade through the explosion of theories of why this or that occurs. Science is messy work, and our attempts to explain things we don't even really understand seem so laughable and vain in the wake of reality. Scientific method is hardly what I'd call intelligence at work: trial and error is more what it might be described as. In its attempts to simplify and organise life, it seems to only make things more complicated, particularly at the so-called cutting edge of the field.