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Science lessons
WHAT is the one thing everyone should learn about science? A London-based online publication — spiked — put the important question to 250 scientists. Here are some of the most provocative answers.
Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: You do not have to be a scientist to do science; you can be a child, a computer, or an intelligent rat. As long as you can verify a result, it is part of science.
Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton: Science is about 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.
Lewis Wolpert of the University College London: I would teach the world that science is the best way to understand the world and that for any set of observations there is only one correct explanation. Also, science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology — from medicine to industry.
Kathy Sykes Collier of the University of Bristol: I would teach the world that science is not about truth, but is about trying to get closer to the truth. This is important because, too often, people look to scientists as having the “truth”. What we have is wrapped in uncertainties, caveats and simplifications.
Harry Kroto of the Sussex University (Nobel laureate): The methods of science are manifestly effective, having made massive humanitarian contributions to society. It is this very effectiveness which the purveyors of mystical philosophies attack.
John Gribbin (astrophysicist and writer): I cannot improve upon the comment of the American physicist Richard Feynman: “The most important information … is the atomic hypothesis … that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”
Bernard Lovell (astronomer and founder of Jodrell Bank Observatory): I would teach the world that fundamental scientific research is neutral, but the dividing line between good and evil in the eventual use of the results of research is often thin and tenuous.
In the first half of the 20th century, research into the structure of matter led to a detailed knowledge of atomic structure, and to a knowledge that in certain transmutations, there was a loss of mass. The second world war led to the enormous concentration of technological effort, to convert this knowledge into devastating weapons of mass destruction, instead of providing atomic power for the benefit of humanity. That contrast between the good and the evil, in the eventual use of research, confronts us today.
Antony Hoare of the Microsoft Corporation: I would teach the world that scientists start by trying very hard to disprove what they hope is true. When they fail, they have a good reason for believing what they hope is true, and can even convince others of its truth. A scientist always acknowledges the possibility of error, and is less likely to be mistaken than one who always claims to be right.
Michael Baum of the University College London: I would teach the world that science = imagination + humility². If only politicians were ruled by the scientific principles of conjectures (hypothesis generation) and refutations (controlled experimentation), then the world would be a better place. To quote the 19th-century British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley: “The tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
John Sulston of the Human Genome Project (Nobel laureate): We have to accept responsibility for the survival of the human race, instead of praying about it. The prize, if we can embrace this humanist philosophy, is an infinite and unimaginably exciting journey ahead of us.
Brian Davies of the King’s College London: Without doubt, the most important single scientific discovery ever made was the connection between electricity and magnetism. This was discovered by the 19th-century British physicist and chemist Michael Faraday, at the Royal Institution in London; and it was systematized by the 19th-century Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, at King’s College London.
This discovery led directly to the electric motor and dynamo — the basis of all electrical power — and also to telephones, radio, television, and computers, upon all of which advanced civilization now depends.
Eric Drexler of the Foresight Institute: Physical technology evolves towards limits set by physical law, and a technology approaching the limits set by physical law must build with atomic precision. Molecular machinery provides a way to accomplish this.
In today’s biological cells and in future manufacturing, large molecular structures can fit together and work together, forming molecular machine systems.
Marcus du Sautoy of the Oxford University (presenter of the BBC programme Mind Games): I would teach the world how the Greeks proved, more than 2,000 years ago, that there are infinitely many prime numbers. In my mind, this discovery is the beginning of mathematics — when humankind realized that, by pure thought alone, it could prove eternal truths of the universe.
Prime numbers are the indivisible numbers, numbers that can be divided only by themselves and one. They are the most important numbers in mathematics, because every number is built by multiplying prime numbers together — for example, 60 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 5. They are like the atoms of arithmetic, the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers.
Richard Fortey of the Natural History Museum, London: Everyone should know about plate tectonics. We all relate to our own landscape — it is what gives us our sense of homeland. Yet the ultimate controls on the shape of the Earth are based upon the slow movement of the tectonic plates. To understand these geological forces gives us all a new respect for our planet — an awareness of how it has been sewed together over 4,000m years, and how it continually remakes itself.
Through geology, we understand our identity. It is sad that geology is sometimes regarded as a “dry” science, for it underlies everything. Geology is a kind of unconscious mind for the world.
Lynne Frostick of the University of Hull and the Environmental Technologies Centre for Industrial Collaboration: I would like to teach the world about climate change, and the role of every human being in causing it. This is far and away the biggest threat to our planet. We will only fight the more serious consequences of climate change if every individual accepts responsibility, and if every individual modifies their behaviour.
Robert Garfinkle of the British Astronomical Association: I would teach the world the famous quote, attributed to Galileo Galilei, “eppur si muove” — Latin for “but still it moves”. It lays the groundwork for understanding the Earth–moon–sun system. Without this orbiting triangle, life as we know it might not even exist on Earth.
From this simple 17th-century quote flows all of our knowledge of our place in the local universe. Our movement about the sun creates our seasons, and gives us the joy of the changing night sky. The changing seasons, in conjunction with the movement of the moon around the Earth and — to a lesser extent — around the sun as well, cause the tides, ocean currents, and worldwide temperature and atmospheric pressure variations, thus causing the weather and ocean movements.
Peggy Lemaux of the University of California at Berkeley: I would nominate the basic formula for photosynthesis: CO2 + H2O + sunlight/chlorophyll —> O2 + C6H12O6. Why is this so important? Because without this chemistry, life on earth would not be possible.
Glucose (C6H12O6) is the basic energy source for all living organisms. The oxygen released as a photosynthetic byproduct, principally of phytoplankton, provides most of the atmospheric oxygen vital to respiration in plants and animals. And animals, in turn, produce carbon dioxide (C02) necessary for plants. Therefore, photosynthesis is considered the ultimate source of life for nearly all plants and animals, by providing the energy required to drive their metabolic processes.
John McCarthy of the Stanford University: Find the numbers, and compare them. As the physicist Lord Kelvin said in 1883, in a lecture to the Institution of Civil Engineers: “When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it. But when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”
Channapatna S. Prakash of the Tuskegee University and the Centre for Plant Biotechnology Research: I would teach the world not to be afraid of the genetic modification of our crops, and to accept GM crops, as they can help to feed the growing world in an environmentally sustainable manner. There is much apprehension and confusion about this technology, especially in Europe. This has led to the needless slowdown of the application of biotechnology in agriculture.
If the world were to embrace GM crops, then we could conquer hunger and poverty much more easily, cut down the use of chemicals on farms, help mitigate the cutting down of tropical forests to expand the area of agriculture, bring more reliability to farming, make farming more profitable, help developing countries through crops that are hardier and tolerant to drought, improve food safety, and improve the nutrition of crops.
Martin Rees of the University of Cambridge: I’d like to widen people’s awareness of the tremendous timespan lying ahead — for our planet, and for life itself. Most educated people are aware that we’re the outcome of nearly 4bn years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures that exist then will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.
Stuart Zola of the Emory University and the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre: I would teach the world the importance of staying actively and intellectually engaged throughout our lives, especially as we become elderly. There are good data now that point to the fact that continuing to challenge yourself late in life — taking up a new hobby, learning to play a musical instrument, doing crossword puzzles — actually helps to maintain cognitive function, and protects against the onset of cognitive decline.
Gerardus Hooft of the Utrecht University (Nobel laureate): Is it really true that the world wants to hear only one thing about science? And then continue after that, with its ongoing religious, superstitious and political disputes? Maybe the world wants to hear only one thing from me.
What could that be? All the important things that the world has already heard from my colleagues might be incomplete — my colleagues may have forgotten to tell the world something. What could that be? I do not know. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
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