American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane by Walter Isaacson

Author:Walter Isaacson [Isaacson, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

A New Way to View Science

I wanted to use the publication of my Einstein book in 2007 as an opportunity to encourage ordinary folks, usually intimidated by science, to try to appreciate its magic and beauty. We want our kids to be taught science, but some folks allow themselves to be intimidated at the prospect of learning it themselves. I used an essay in USA Today to make my case.

Sometimes when I tell people I’ve written a biography of Albert Einstein, they snap their heads as if to say they’ve never understood science. They may feel that the Founding Fathers are easily comprehensible, and even so is Shakespeare (which he isn’t), but that Einstein is completely intimidating.

Einstein has come to personify the perception that modern physics is something ordinary folks can’t try to appreciate. Indeed, scientific illiteracy is sometimes worn as a badge of pride. Most educated people would be ashamed to admit they don’t know the difference between Hamlet and King Lear, but they might jovially brag that they don’t know a gene from a chromosome or relativity theory from the uncertainty principle. When people tell me that they think science is too difficult but that they love Hamlet, I sometimes ask them: But does Hamlet love Ophelia? They pause and say that’s very complicated. I agree. Both Shakespeare and Einstein can both be complicated at times, but we should enjoy wrestling with their complexities as well as admiring the beauty and creativity of their work.

We are now engaged in one of our periodic spasms of trying to make sure that our kids learn science and math. Congress this year is expected to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law, and fear that we will lose our ability to compete globally has prompted something called the America Competes Act, which would fund proposals including a science policy summit, new research projects, summer internships and prize programs for high school students, and teacher-training programs.

None of these education endeavors, however, will truly change things unless we revise the way that we grownups view science. Many nonscientists, and I daresay most of our politicians, balk at understanding and celebrating science themselves. To the extent that we allow ourselves to be intimidated by math and science, we are less likely to convey to our kids that it can be a creative and imaginative pursuit, no less so than poetry and music.

Einstein was a wonderfully creative and imaginative thinker. He visualized vivid mental pictures that make his theories come alive. Time varies depending on your motion? The fabric of space is warped by massive objects? Gravity can bend light? Light is both a wave and a stream of particles? His theories contain a wondrous mix of Huh? and Wow! that can capture the public imagination.

He devised most of them by using thought experiments—that’s what you and I would call daydreaming, but if you’re Einstein you get to call it a thought experiment. The pictures he visualized can be used, with no math necessary, to give a glimpse of the creativity at the heart of true genius.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.