Just a few days ago, Earth was about 17,000 miles away from colliding with an asteroid. To keep that in perspective, the circumference of the earth is nearly 25,000 miles.

The close proximity of that space rock, however, did not garner much attention. NASA assured us that Earth was safe, and we carried on with our lives. It was only after the fact that a few articles appeared about the differences among asteroids, meteors, meteorites and comets. Either Americans know such distinctions, or they don’t care much.

The latter possibility seems more likely. Instead of looking up at the stars, wondering what else is out there or trying to understand the universe of which Earth is only a speck-sized part, we tend to devote our obsessions to extracting the minerals beneath our feet or finding the key to the problems of human frailty. Humans’ tendency is to do such things rather than inquire about the world around them — and that includes the Earth, too, not just space. Our question is not, “What remains to be discovered?” but rather, “What profit will this discovery bring to me?”

The close call with an asteroid also had a political angle that casts light on human civilization’s true priorities. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said in a statement, “Developing technology and research that enable us to track objects like Asteroid 2012 DA14 is critical to our future. We should continue to invest in systems that identify threatening asteroids and develop contingencies, if needed, to change the course of an asteroid headed toward Earth.”

In one respect, Smith is correct. Anticipating asteroids on a collision course with Earth and discovering how to alter that course is essential to the survival of the human species. It takes little imagination to dream up the consequences of an asteroid impact. The theory that an asteroid’s collision with Earth led to the extinction of the dinosaurs is a perennially popular theory, and films like “Armageddon” entertain the notion that such an event could end human civilization as well.

Smith forgot, however, an important aspect of space exploration: that we ought to explore the world and space just for the sake of knowing. We ought to touch every piece of it with human experience (and not just at the end of a satellite’s video feed). We ought to set foot on it, and not just send our technical relics to other worlds. We ought to boldly go where no men have gone before.

Science is not intimidating. Nor is it technical, nor is it really like any “science” we think of. Biology, chemistry, physics — these are not the only sciences. Look at a dictionary, and you’ll see that, being derived from the Latin word for “knowledge,” science is “the state of knowing” or “a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study.” Any discipline that uses the scientific method of posing a question, formulating a hypothesis, testing it, gathering data and making a conclusion based on that data.

History, for example, is a science. Perhaps most importantly of all, politics is a science. Anytime we deal rationally with reality instead of warping it to fit within a framework of prejudice and myth that we already possess, we are scientific.