I think much of the fun in science, and coming up with curious questions of all sorts, is in the actually not knowing. I cannot help but wonder how many more greater discoveries have been made because a scientist has been skeptical of their own results and so kept asking further questions (as in the rat experiment above)?

Part of the wonderment is in actually wondering what is going on when something is unexplained. My scientific head tells me that there HAS to be an answer to every unanswered question BUT I do believe there are some things that will reamin a mystery for a long time yet to come. Sometimes being skeptical, even of the answer when it is, can be useful.

Of course, something that is operating outside of defined natural laws (psychic forces) only means that if they do exist then those laws have yet to be defined (found, demonstrated and thereby answered). If true psychic forces exist then they exist within nature nevertheless surely?

John Steinbeck wrote in Camery Row, "The remarkable thing... isn't that they [stink bugs] put their tails up in the air - the really incredibly remarkable thing is that we find it remarkable. We have only ourselves to use as yardsticks." How true that often is in natural history and many behavioural things. Finding answers outside of our own sphere of senses and behaviour is often difficult but...

The answer is out there (X-Files) ;-)

mp