As a once practicing scientist (and a present day science teacher), I have three heroes.
My earliest was of Carl Sagan, and sitting with a push button remote, attached by a wire to channel 17, which was our PBS station in Toronto. His program, of course, was Cosmos, and I would have been enraptured by it at the age of 14. High school.
The second is Richard Feynman. Before taking my biology degree at the U of C, I read a number of books by or about Feynman, not the least impressive of which was Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman?.
Both of these authors were not only eminent minds in their respective fields (cosmology and physics), but also brilliant popularizers of science, and of how science works. In the sense that they presented the big story in ways that most people could understand (mostly… it’s a bit hard to say that of QED), they excelled.
But as they say, “Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident”.
One of those giants was born 199 years ago today, and he is my third: Charles Darwin.
Photo Credit: Scuba Dooba
I really do need to spend some time and describe the need (as I see it) for a rational approach to and appreciation of science and the approach to understanding the natural world it represents. I’ve written about the need to learn science previously, but there is a bigger need. Just read a bit of Denise O’Leary or Ken Ham, or consider that there exists in Alberta a “museum” that, among other things, posits that man walked and lived with the dinosaurs.
(To the visitor of said museum from Montana, I say this: hope you’re not spreading your genes anywhere important.)
There is much work to be done, and that is why, in part, I am a science educator. I return to work in a few short weeks. I’m looking forward to the challenge.
And to one of the giants, I raise a glass of pinot noir in your memory. Happy Darwin Day.
(perhaps next year, for the bicentennial)