Pursuit

I've been reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark - a birthday present from Nick (who knows how much I love books, science, and Carl Sagan).

It's mostly been talking about scientific literacy, and how important it is. Not just for scientists, but for everyone. Students. Politicians. Parents. Educators.  It's about how seductive pseudoscience and ignorance can be, and how dangerous they are, too.

I'll write some more about it when I've finished it.  Suffice it to say, it's wonderfully written and makes me want to be Carl Sagan when I grow up.





I'm considering going back to school.  For premed, maybe? So I can be an optometrist? Or a speech pathologist? Something. I was lying in bed this morning, thinking about the future, thinking about things Carl Sagan said in The Demon-Haunted World, thinking about the science teachers I had in grade school and high school.

It struck me how, after fourth grade (when I had a wonderful science teacher who made it hands-on, who showed us that science isn't a big abstract concept, that it's immediate and breathing and inseparable from existence), I didn't have any teachers who painted the big picture.

They taught their subject well, but it didn't connect to anything. I just learned about lysosomes and mitosis and balancing chemical equations and finding the coefficient of Mμ, without understanding the why behind the how.

No one stopped to point out that the beauty of the scientific method is its tireless pursuit of the truth, its ability to admit when it's wrong, its capacity to look past the obvious and seek the unknown.

I never connected what I was doing in the classroom with the concept of critical thinking. It was just a lot of rote memorization and standardized test preparation.

Not one teacher lifted off the lid of procedure to reveal the romance that lies so close to science's heart.

I've been mulling all of this over a lot lately.  Maybe I should be a science teacher.  Maybe I should be a science writer. I'm no scientist, but I do think about the future. I think about everything I don't know or understand, and I think about how there are other people out there who ask the same questions I ask, who work at chipping away at humanity's ignorance. I think about all the kids I went to school with who wouldn't even understand the point Sagan makes in The Demon-Haunted World, and of the politicians who think science is an unimportant sideshow.

I think about all of this, and I think about how it seems like so many people out there have no idea how beautiful and humbling the universe is, and I think about what it would take to show them, even just a little bit of it.

I don't really know what I want to do with my life, but this seems like something worthwhile.