The Difference Between Knowing the Name of Something and Understanding it

Richard Feynman is definitely one role models when it comes to being a scientist. Feynman was legendary for being able to intuitively understand even the most complex topics, but what made him the most famous was just how brilliant of a teacher he was. Throughout Feynman's entire career, he was constantly given praise for his ability to clearly and simply explain things to his peers. Even today, a series of physics textbooks titled The Feynman Lectures, originally written by Feynman himself, is widely popular for being a wonderful introduction to undergraduate physics that gives great, intuitive explanations without sacrificing depth.

In the above video, Feynman describes what I think separates a true scientist from someone who just thinks they're smart because they know a few fancy words. To give a short summary: Feynman recalls a time from his childhood when his friend made fun of him for failing to identify a bird as a Brown-Throated Thrush. Feynman's response was that he in fact knew the names of the bird in several different languages, but his point is that even after learning all these different names for the bird, he and his friend knew nothing about the bird itself! Science is not simply a process of categorizing everything and giving them extremely long-winded names so that scientists can sound smart when they talk to each other. It's the process by which we come to understand the mechanisms that govern the world around us. When a particular object or idea seems to be especially important or interesting, it's only fitting that we give it a special name.

As a part-time job, I sometimes work as a science teacher for 5th graders. On a handful of days every week, I'll visit their classroom for an hour or so to give a science lesson. The lesson material is prepared and sometimes even scripted beforehand, the only preparation I need to do is to familiarize myself with the material and how to set up whatever lab we happen to be doing. One of my more recent labs involved cell biology where the kids made little models of cells out of candy. Now, I think this lab would be perfectly fine if the kids had learned about cells beforehand, but when we got to naming the different parts of the cell, almost none of the kids raised their hand and most had never even heard of things like the cell nucleus, let alone structures with more complicated names like the Golgi apparatus or the smooth endoplasmic reticulum. My first thought when looking over the lab was that if these kids weren't already familiar with these things, they're going to forget everything I'll have said the minute I leave the classroom! On top of that, most of the lesson time was intended to be devoted to building the cell models, with only a bit of time at the beginning being set a side to simply have them copy down a few key terms! Since the models were made out of candy, I could tell the kids didn't really care about the science at all.

For me, that's exactly NOT the way science should be taught. I felt like I was doing nothing but leaving my students with a large vocabulary (assuming they remember it at all) full of words that they don't understand. Their knowledge can barely even be called superficial. The candy was nothing but a way to draw the kids' attention. The problem is that their attention wasn't being directed at the science, just the candy! Of course, I'm not just ranting about this particular lesson plan, since I've definitely felt the same way about some my own science classes in grade school. There are a lot of science classes that present science like it's some kind of grab-bag full of facts that we should just know because, you know, it's science! I think we should be teaching science the way we teach literature or history, by telling a story. That's how you get people to remember what you said. That's how show people how everything you're talking about fits together. In other words, it's how you get people to understand.

Preposterous Universe (Voice Post)

Preposterous Universe is a scientific blog written by cosmologist Dr. Sean Carroll. The purpose of Preposterous Universe, like Professor Johnson's blog, Asymptotia, is to take scientific topics and present them to the lay. Unlike Asymptotia, Preposterous Universe is dedicated exclusively to scientific topics. Dr. Carroll's work focuses on general relativity and dark energy, two topics at the forefront of our understanding of the fundamental structure of the universe.

Dr. Carroll's approach to making physics accessible to the lay is to tell the story with an aspect of magical realism that makes the laws of physics seem almost magical while keeping in mind the fact that these laws are in fact the laws which govern the universe we live in. Take, for example, Dr. Carroll's post about the discovery of gravitational waves in February. The post opens like a fairy tale:

"ONCE upon a time, there lived a man who was fascinated by the phenomenon of gravity. In his mind he imagined experiments in rocket ships and elevators, eventually concluding that gravity isn’t a conventional “force” at all — it’s a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime."

By writing in a style which is typical of fairy tales and mythology, Dr. Carroll reminds us that physics is simply playing the same role as any mythological story about gods and demons: it is an attempt to explain and make sense of the universe. If people are fascinated by stories of Prometheus bringing the gift of fire to man or how Zeus is capable of manipulating lightning, they should certainly be fascinated by our modern-day "stories" about how the structure of space and time itself can become distorted according to certain rules--provided the story is told in a way that makes them want to listen. This is what Dr. Carroll achieves in his blog.

As he describes the details of the experiment, Dr. Carroll explains,

"Some guy scribbles down some symbols in an esoteric mixture of Latin, Greek, and mathematical notation. [...] Other people (notably Rainer Weiss, Ronald Drever, and Kip Thorne), on the basis of taking those scribbles extremely seriously, launch a plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of decades. They concoct an audacious scheme to shoot laser beams at mirrors to look for modulated displacements of less than a millionth of a billionth of a centimeter"

This time, he takes the mysticism out of physics by making it seem almost ridiculous. The man who "was fascinated by the phenomenon of gravity" and who then went on to "[scribble] down some symbols" is in fact Albert Einstein. Dr. Carroll presents Einstein as just another nutjob who thinks he's got the universe figured out. Unbelievably, everyone seems to think this guy is the real deal, and thousands wind up investing their precious time, money, and effort into proving to the rest of the world that he's right! Spoiler alert: it works.

Dr. Carroll's passion extends beyond simply telling the story of science. He's a firm believer that science is something that anyone can be involved in and that it can be meaningful endeavor for anyone who's even remotely interested. Because of this, he speaks with a loud voice when he sees people being prevented from doing science for reasons outside their own control.

For example, in another post, Dr. Carroll speaks out against gender discrimination in physics. He recalls a time when a professor asked him why it was that the women in his physics class were scoring higher on the problem sets, to which he responds "'Maybe they are ... also smart?'" The sarcasm in his voice conveys just how ridiculous such a question is. For what reason would anyone to do better on a problem set than their classmates? What else could it be other than that they have a better grasp of the material? Somehow, the professor fails to reach this incredibly obvious conclusion.

In the same post, Dr. Carroll makes it clear that he abhors the current status quo of academic science where a student who reaches out for help and support is regarded as incompetant. He characterises this attitude by giving an example of a response to a plea for help: "'You think your advisor is asking inappropriate things of you? I guess you're not cut out for this after all.'" Dr. Carroll's voice as he presents this statement shows how shallow and thoughtless he considers a statement like this to be. It is a mindset which is harsh, egotistical, and judgmental.

On his "About This Blog" page, Dr. Carroll mentions that he writes this blog for the sole purpose of talking about those things which interest him. Like anyone who simply wants to share a story that he/she finds interesting, Dr. Carroll presents his stories in a way that makes them enjoyable for readers. He fills them with emotion, draws humorous analogies, and most importantly of all, reminds us that science is a human endeavor.