Teaching The World About Science
To celebrate the centenary of the publication of Albert Einstein’s equation E = mc2, spiked conducted a survey of over 250 renowned scientists, science communicators, and educators - including 11 Nobel laureates - asking what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing.
If I could teach the world just one thing about science…
I would tell everyone that science isn’t just for people with Ph.D.’s or large noggins. Learning about science isn’t all or nothing. No one understands the whole picture, not even a Nobel laureate. Start studying science anywhere and everywhere; from studying genetic inheritance in the way your child resembles you to informatics in the way spam gets filtered from your inbox.
Take baby steps. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and don’t hesitate to dig for information. If you’re reading this, then answers are at your fingertips all over the Web (although it pays to be skeptical of some of it). Everyone is a scientist whether you realize it or not.
Professor Janet Bainbridge, biochemical engineer, and science policy adviser to the UK government.
I should teach the world that knowledge of science is fundamental to our quality of life, and the application of scientific discovery is vital. This application may be good or bad, but that is not the fault of the scientist. It is the job of regulatory agencies to ensure the safe application of science. Atomic fission and fusion could generate safe, clean electricity, or could give rise to lethal radiation.
I would also teach the world about DNA and the genome, the ways in which gene technology can be used for health, and genetically modified foods, which will help us so much in the future. The science of the past 10 years was based upon the principles of physics. Now, science will be biology-based.
Professor Monica M Grady, head of petrology and meteoritics at the Natural History Museum in London.
I should teach the world that science is not right or wrong, is not good or bad, is never as clear-cut as commentators often make it out to be, and does not have final answers. Science makes progress towards answers, and that progress is a series of steps - occasionally big steps, but more usually small steps.
Scientists often disagree, over the interpretation of data, but one scientist is not right and the other wrong. They are not arguing - just debating, to make matters clearer, which will lead to another step forward. Science is never finished, and science is always full of surprises. The next surprise is just around the corner - only you do not know which corner.
Susan Haack Cooper, senior scholar in arts and sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami in Coral Gables.
In his essay ‘Physics and reality’, Albert Einstein writes that scientific inquiry is ‘nothing but a refinement of everyday thinking’.
The important idea behind this is that, rather than there being a special method of inquiry available to all scientists but only scientists, there are methods and procedures used by everyone engaged in empirical inquiry. And there are an extraordinary array of special techniques and devices - such as instruments of observation, mathematical techniques from numerals to the calculus to the computer, etc - which enable scientists to extend their evidential reach, and to refine their assessment of the worth of evidence.
This stress upon continuity with, and refinement of, everyday thinking, suggests that we should stop worrying - as philosophers of science have long done - about the problem of demarcation of science from non-science, and about the ever-elusive scientific method. We should think instead about the constraints and demands upon all empirical inquiry, and the ways in which the sciences have refined and amplified human cognitive capacities.
Pointer from Gene Expression.
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