On Science

王乙锟 北京一零一中学高一阅读书目：国家地理科学探索丛书 物理科学系列：《力与运动》《走进电的世界》生命科学系列：《你和你的基因》《观察细胞》《保护地球母亲》

I have got a lot of interesting scientific knowledge from the books of National Geographic Reading Expeditions, some of which are about life, physics. I really can’t help losing myself in the colorful pictures and clear words in the books. After reading the books, I have been considering a question: What if we lived without science?

Great changes have taken place in the world with the help of science. In the past, life was nasty,

utish and short. It is hard to imagine how our forefathers could do without so many conveniences that modern science

ings about. Back then, only a small group of people enjoyed the very few comforts. But the majority of people didn’t even have sufficient food, let along their privilege to be educated. Anyway, it is science that changes the world and makes people’s life better and better, although it also leads to some bad aspects at the same time.

From the discovery of the gravity to the first step on the moon, we human beings have experienced a long process of developing science. And now, this process is still continuing much faster. New organisms are already being engineered, and new genetically modified crops promise benefits from higher yields and less use of harmful chemicals and so on. A lot of examples are showing this point. In the future, changes are likely to be even much greater as science reaches out to shape life itself. Maybe one day, the possibility that life existed on Mars billions of years ago will be potentially one of the greatest discoveries of our time. It is the force of the competition, we human beings’ inquiring mind and initiative that

ing about the non-stopped development of science. Therefore, it is difficult and impossible to prevent science from changing the world and our life as well.

At present, we are in two minds about science. On the one hand, we are enjoying the sweet life as a result of the evelopment of science, and expect it to continue. And we are showing our interests into some scientific expeditions, such as the astronomy, the alien civilization, etc. On the other hand, we are distrustful of it, due to the lack of understanding of science. Some people thus far are still very superstitious, and they would even believe in superstitions rather than believe in science.

Stephen Hawking, one of the most remarkable scientists in the world, once said, “In a democratic society, the public needs to have a basic understanding of the science, so that it can make informed decisions and not leave them in the hands of experts.” This has reminded me of Professor Alan G. MacDiarmid from America, the person who got the Nobel Prize for chemistry in the year of 2000. In his lecture at Peking University this year, he put forward that science is people. He also expounded the importance of the basic science for the public. Evidently, every one of us does need science, or we can’t live without it.

Now that everyone needs science, why not take advantage of some means to give the public the right basic scientific knowledge? So when they face the problems such as acid rain, the greenhouse effect, nuclear weapons, environment destruction and some other problems, they can also make informed decisions on these subjects, just as what Hawking said. One aspect relies on what is taught in schools. But science is often taught in an uninteresting way and most students just learn it by rote to pass examinations. However, the final goal of learning science is not to pass examinations or to get a higher score; instead, we should try to make full use of it to change our world and life. While learning, we should try to ask more questions and we should have the courage of suspecting the knowledge in the books, as some of the scientific conclusions are likely to be corrected in the future. Who knows. So not only must we change our attitude towards science, but also the way of teaching and learning science.

In addition, science is always changing at a fast rate, and who we learn at school isn’t that sufficient to last a lifetime. So the mass media including TV, radio, newspaper, magazine and publishing company will play an important role in reporting the latest science in time. Moreover, the mass media can also popularize basic science to the public, because only in this way will more people realize what on earth science is.

“Scientists and engineers tend to express their ideas in the form of equations because they need to know the precise values of quantities. But for the rest of us, a qualitative grasp of scientific concepts is sufficient, and this can be conveyed by words and diagrams, without the use of equations”, said Stephen Hawking.

I agree with him very much, and, I’m fond of the wonderful words above, from Stephen Hawking.

For the development of science, are you ready?