creative forces

Blog 32…April 2014

A while ago the director of the American Museum of Natural History announced that there were 3 million jobs in the US unfilled because there weren’t people with qualifications in science to take them.  Although science is fascinating and the basis of all our life forces, it seems to have a bad or at least conflicted rap with the general public…. not to mention the disdain of our own federal government.

Until the 80’s when people like Isaac Azimoff and Carl Sagan and our own David Suzuki started writing books and making TV shows about science, a lot of it was considered too difficult for most of us to understand.  Science is complex, but like any other complex thing, it can be broken down and approached logically and sequentially. A well organized person who knows his stuff can introduce us to it gradually and make us fall in love with the wonder of the world around us, how it’s evolved and how it works. And packaged in a medium we recognize like film or TV takes the material to a wider audience, kids in particular.

The latest artist to take up the cause is actor Alan Alda who delivered a plenary session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago in February titled Getting beyond a Blind Date with Science. He chided scientists about using jargon that is perplexing rather than impressive, encouraging them to speak in clear, straightforward terms as much as possible without dumbing it down.  He also urges those of us in the general public to persist with a commitment to explore and understand, ask questions, be curious.

Cosmos, the TV show originally hosted by Carl Sagan, has re- emerged with Neil Degrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium acting as host…totally appropriate since he’s a protégé of Sagan’s. It’s just about half way into a 13 week series, so it’s a good place to start your love affair with science. There are also CBC radio’s Quirks and Quarks and The Nature of Things, David Suzuki’s long running CBC TV show.

Inside the Large Hadron Collider 

Jubilant scientists outside the LHC

                 

A recent documentary Particle Fever, about the Large Hadron Collider and the discovery of the Higgs bosun is filmed as a thriller, keeping us on the edges of our seats at the sight of the gigantic LHC and the scientists around the world working feverishly in their labs. The suspense of the initial failure and second successful attempt is followed by a touching look at Peter Higgs wiping tears from his eyes at the moment his {or God’s) particle was found. 

Science can be challenging, even scary, easier to tune in to Net flicks than inform ourselves about climate change. The enthusiasm of David Suzuki and Neil Degrasse Tyson for science and how it touches all of us helps us deal with the unknown unknowns (remember that?...) always more scary than the known unknowns.