Spiked has a great piece featuring short responses from 250 renowned scientists (at least Spiked says they’re renowned, which will have to do). They asked each of these big-brained individuals ”what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing.”
Supporting my previous post(s) on the subject, their answers could often work wonderfully if we substituted the word ‘art’ for ‘science’. Here are a few:
Freeman Dyson: ”The main thing to understand is that science is about uncertainty. Science teaches us to have a high tolerance of uncertainty. We do not yet know the answers to most of the important questions — nature is smarter than we are. But if we are patient, and not in too much of a hurry, then science gives us a good way to find the answers.”
Dr Deeph Chana: ”I should teach the world that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another. This is the simple and elegant statement of the law of conservation of energy — a concept that has profound implications for any discipline that purports to be a science.”
Paul Davies: ”The essence of the scientific method is that there is an actually existing world out there, which is ordered in an intelligible way. The job of the scientist is to describe that order, in the best possible manner. Science is not about right and wrong, about truth, or even about reality. It is about providing reliable descriptions of the world that enable us to make new discoveries.”
Matt Ridley: ”The one thing I would try to teach the world about science is that science is not a catalogue of facts, but a search for new mysteries. Science increases the store of wonder and mystery in the world; it does not erode it.”
And, of course, there are a few that I absolutely don’t agree with (which is part of the scientific process too). Here’s one:
Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen: ”I should teach the world that science, natural and social, is the only method we have for discovering — or at least approaching — truth, which is potentially accessible to all human beings.”
I can think of a few other methods for approaching truth in a way that’s potentially accessible to all human beings: poetry, dance, painting, sculpture, music, literature, theater, handicraft, and on and on. But then again, they didn’t ask me.
