How to Educate a Scientist: By Anthony O'Hear and Michael Redhead.
Intro: >>Popular science is a multi-million pound publishing industry. Books purporting to divulge the secrets of the universe, of life, of time, of evolutionary psychology, of consciousness, of quantum theory, and of much else besides now fill large sections of bookshops in every major town and shopping centre in the country. Many of these books make it into the best-seller lists. They are widely and often respectfully reviewed, there are national prizes for them, and their authors become famous in their own right, with newspaper columns and radio and television appearances.
Whether the books do what they (or their publishers) claim they do is another question; and whether, if they do, they are understood by their readers (or even actually read beyond the first couple of chapters) is yet another question, and one not unrelated to our present topic, because if you lack a basic education in science, it is not clear that the deficit can satisfactorily be made up by a publisher's pot-boiler. So there is a question as to whether there really can be 'popular' science, that is, scientific understanding in the absence of harder and more systematic scientific study than can be found in popularly presented books. But the existence of a market for such things is a striking testament to the fact that people desire to know the things the books are about and what science can tell us about them. Science, or what science attempts to do, answers to a basic human need, as basic in its own different way as literature, music and the arts generally.
So why is it that in schools science is often so disliked by pupils? Why is it that many university science and maths departments have great difficulty filling their places at all, let alone with good applicants? Why is it that so few people seem to want to study science, compared to those who want to study business or English or the media?<<
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posted by johannes,
Saturday, August 19, 2006
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