I guess I am crazy

Right now I am reading one of my favorite textbooks in fluid dynamics.

In case you have the wrong idea of how much I love reading it since I used the word "favorite", I would like to give you a brief list of things I read ranked by my preference:
1. friends' blogs in Chinese or English
2. entertainment news in Chinese
3. novel in Chinese
4. message/discussion board in Chinese
5. entertainment news in English
6. non-textbooks in English
7. papers or textbooks in English

Now back to where I started. So I am reading this book. The more I read it, the more strongly I feel that no one really understand fluid dynamics.

I had the same feelings when I read the papers in my research field. Ok, there are some "good papers" or smart people out there. However, they are either very good at math, which is a huge plus if you study fluid dynamics, or they simply found some interesting phenomena early enough to get famous.

Most of the time I only see people pointing at some curve and saying "so this goes up as this increase, which probably means these two have a deep relationship with each other". Well, I understand this kind of conclusion might be really helpful when people want to build something, such as the project Brian is working on.

But, what is the physics? What do we add to the real science? Probably nothing.

My problem is that if I can't understand something from the root, I won't be confident to say that I know it. For example, if anyone asks me something about my research, I want to be able to explain to him or her through the most basic ideas of physics such as Newton's 2nd law or the conservation of mass.

Although I have the dim hope that I could be different, the reality is that in the near future, I will graduate with some superficial interperation to my data wrapped in fancy words, like many other graduate students.

And that's why I never liked the idea of pursuing academia career. I don't have the courage to either be honest with myself knowing I am wasting time and money, or hold up a lifetime lie pretending I am making any contribution to science.