Why has there been such an assault on science in recent years?
I watched bees and watched bees and watched bees and just said, "What's the deal? How can they possibly do this? Up and down, back and forth, hovering, filling up their pollen baskets." Pollen looks like it weighs twice what they do, and they have tiny, tiny wings. What we want everybody to experience in science education and science is the joy of discovery.Īnd I definitely experienced that when I was a little, little kid. I had written "the thrill of discovery," and he said, "No, the joy of discovery." When I got involved, in a very, very, very small way on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, I claim that I was the guy waving his arms, jumping up and down, saying, "We've gotta put a message to the future on this thing." And the guy who really crystallized it was the principal investigator, Steve Squyres. What first drew you to science? Was it the emotional connection? When you say, "I feel," it's really hard for the reader to say, "No, you don't." Yes, I do. If I say, "I remember the time I met Ivan the gorilla," it's really difficult for the listener or reader to go, "No, you don't!" Stories are how we remember things, how we organize things.īy telling a story in the first person, it's hard to dismiss. The reason is, we find stories compelling. That's my business! In the book, I purposely spend a lot of time in the first person. It's been said that a good way of convincing people of something is to appeal to their emotions. When you understand anything about astronomy or have just a rudimentary understanding of radioactivity, the Earth is patently not 6,000 years old. We met people who insisted that the Earth was 6,000 years old.
I was a member of the Northwest Skeptics, which is the Seattle-based skeptics organization. How and when did you first encounter creationism?Ībout 20 years ago. We can't raise a generation of students who don't understand the fundamental idea in all of life science, any more than you want to raise a generation of kids who don't understand chemistry or physics or arithmetic. I worry about these kids-they're part of my society. This is the big concern of mine with respect to the organization Answers in Genesis and Ken Ham and all those guys: their relentless, built-in attempts to indoctrinate a generation of science students on a worldview that is obviously wrong. Grown-ups who have an interest in the world around them, people coming of age who have an interest in science, people who still want to know how the world works. In his new book, Nye delights in how this fundamental discovery helps to unlock the mysteries of everything from bumblebees to human origins to our place in the universe. The experience prompted the celebrity science educator to write a "primer" on the theory of evolution called Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation. Nye's decision to engage Ham kicked up plenty of criticism from scientists and creationists alike. Last February, the former engineer defended the theory of evolution in a debate with young-Earth creationist Ken Ham, a vocal member of a group that believes the Earth is only 6,000 years old. With a jaunty bow tie and boyish enthusiasm, Bill Nye the Science Guy has spent decades decoding scientific topics, from germs to volcanoes, for television audiences.
0 kommentar(er)
