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Tomorrow's Science Heroes?
An anonymous reader writes "As a kid I was (and still am) heavily influenced by Carl Sagan, and a little later by Stephen Hawking. Now as I have started a family with two kids, currently age 5 and 2, I am wondering who out there is popularizing science. Currently, my wife and I can get the kids excited about the world around them, but I'd like to find someone inspiring from outside the family as they get older. Sure, we'll always have 'Cosmos,' but are there any contemporaries who are trying to bring science into the public view in such a fun and intriguing way? Someone the kids can look up to and be inspired by? Where is the next Science Hero?"
I am currently going through a Neil deGrasse Tyson phase.
I'm 19, and Dawkins has been an enormous influence on me. A few years back he was one of figures that helped me jetisson religion, and ever since I've had a greater curiousity about science.
They teach the heart of the Scientific Method and show it as being FUN. Test the hypothesis - then retest it, just like Jaime and Adam do every episode.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Bill Nye.
Carl Sagan died in 1996.
Religion and Science are 100% incompatible. Religion = "I Believe", Science = "I can show/demonstrate/repeat". These two ways of looking at the world are not, and never will be, compatible. Those who "combine" the two really are saying, "I believe this or that, but, I can't completely ignore this incontrovertible evidence over here, but, for anything else, I'll just BELIEVE!" Horse-Puckey!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Sorta makes me sad that Carl Sagan isn't around anymore and apparently no one noticed. Some pop star kicks the bucket and the world comes to a grinding halt. :(
Because of him your children won't be threatened by Manbearpig
How about Elmo and Curious George?
You've got years before they give a rat's ass about Cosmos or David Attenborough wildlife documentaries. It's OK, they're little kids.
PBS has Nova ScienceNOW, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3210/02.html
It's pretty good, and surprisingly current.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Maybe the religions you have been introduced to are incompatible with science. But, there is a lot of science that cannot be shown/demonstraited/repeated. Do you not know of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. Do you not know that many scientific discoveries were postulates before they could be proven? What about all the postulates that are proven wrong? What about the particle theory of light and the wave theory of light, should you not study them, because one theory seems to contradict another? Many people believe in religion as what it is claimed, faith is not something you can prove, but I believe that being kind to fellow human beings will bring me a reward, am I deluded? Possibly, but isn't it worth testing the theory out during my short life-time. If it is a theory that proves to be false, I still believe that for the space of my human life that I will be better off. Do you refuse to use the equations for Newtonian Physics because they are only valid for objects around the mass of things we use everyday and not for very small or very large objects? So, you still maintain that there is not reason to follow religious beliefs because God hasn't knocked on your door? The golden rule do unto others as you would have done to you is bogus because your limited knowledge of religion cannot be met? Yes you are better off without religion and without science, because, you don't believe in science, you only believe in known science. You're not much better than the people who wouldn't believe the world was a sphere because you couldn't see the whole of it in your day. I am very religious, I see no conflict between religion and the theory of evolution, Darwin was a Monk and prayed every day, how do you think he was able to get past the limited scientific views of his day and propose a theory that has since had so many proof? If I didn't believe in God, I wouldn't feel so strongly that we can successfully clone humans, full or parts to solve some of the defects in our physical bodies. Does that shock you that religious people not only believe in science, but that religion encourages that belief? I went to a religious university, the professors there said God wants us to learn these things, that is why we are here.
Science should be practical. It's good when it helps people. Any individual scientist who has done science to help people is worth looking up to. That also goes for anyone else of any profession.
You're asking for celebrities. Celebrities are not famous for helping people, they're famous for appearing on TV. Do you really think it's wise to teach your kids to look up to whoever the TV producers want to put on TV? Are TV producers wise?
Why not teach them to value practical virtue rather than vanity?
In a poll, Cowboy Neal is the only reasonnable answer.
... the creator of what? If you demand Carl use science, you do the same. Let me guess, I'll have to place faith in repeated memes instead...
I'll bank on evidence and hold to theories backed by substantial evidence.
I don't think the submitter was asking for a Sunday school answers to a request for science instruction. While it is perfectly acceptable to use God to fill the holes in knowledge for the time being (if a society must because it has a sever phobia of areas of uncertainty and doubt), it is not acceptable for a society to refuse to acknowledge scientific findings, or refuse the future possibility of what science may find simply because it has already answered that particular question with the stock "The Creator did it."
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Each science has its own heroes in the current day. If you really want to establish a science hero for your kids, choose which science you want to teach them about first. Much as Einstein isn't a great hero to evolutionary biologists, Darwin isn't a great hero to modern physicists. You could, of course, try to cover a wide variety of scientific disciplines (and their respective heroes) in a short amount of time, but you would probably do better to start with more approachable subjects and bring up the heroes of those.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You can't be serious. Surely this is an attempt at humor?
Sagan was a well-respected scientist before he wrote anything.
So if you aren't joking, then you must be trolling. Knock it off.
And if you aren't being a troll, then you're just a dick. Fuck off.
Ignorance is bliss? He was dead on about Pluto, people got all emotional about a LARGE HUNK OF ICE. Would you rather scientists just ignore stuff like that and play up to popular opinion? He was smirking because he knows how stupid the 'debate' is. I liked it even better when he kind of put what Branson does into perspective and how the two of them really arent relational in anyway. LEO is a joke compared to what Tyson thinks about in terms of space travel. Im not disparaging Sir Richard Branson or the work he does in ANY WAY, but it was a good perspective.
Good-bye
I dislike that Neil deGrasse guy, he was quite the smirking "I'm smart and you're not" during that whole Pluto isn't a planet anymore crap. I'm with Michio Kaku as my favorite science enthusiast and speaker. He's smart, he's enthused and he didn't go around on the Tonight Show smirking about how Pluto isn't a planet. I'm also looking to punch whoever it was that decided Brontosaurus wasn't a proper name for the Brontosaurus too. (shakes fist in fury)
You're a little late on that one. The peer-reviewed paper that showed that the "brontosaurus" was really an apatosaur was published in 1903.
I'm a Michio Kaku fan, too and have been since I read his book Hyperspace 15 years ago.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Sagan used to be my science hero, when I was a kid and I watched a regular show of his on TV.
Then one show I was watching there was some topic about visits from extraterrestrials, interstellar travel etc.
Carl came out and said "There is no possibility of visits from other worlds. The distances involved are so great that it would take thousands of years for them to get to our solar system."
My jaw dropped at that statement. Up to that point I had thought he was an imaginative and intelligent guy.
Evidently he could not conceive of alien beings for whom thousands of years was a very short time and who could even make such a journey 'just for the hell of it'.
For him this was completely impossible, inconceivable.
Thats pretty sad for a guy with his reputation.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
All the names listed above do the trick and a special note goes out to the cognitive scientists: Pinker, Dennett, Minsky, etc.
Carl Sagan was an even rarer breed though. More than just popularizing science: making it understandable and curious, he brought it to a deeper almost spiritual level and let you see both how your day to day life was a part of something so unimaginably huge and fantastic while simultaniously making a good case for our species to push the frontiers.
I don't think anyone can compare. If I had to try I'd pick Michio Kaku, he's a definitely more down to Earth than Sagan, but still great.
P.S. For a bit of history and sociology in the mix I really really suggest you pick up Connections (Season 1) and The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke. It stands beside Cosmos as my favorite TV series and will get your kids interested in economics, sociology and history on top of science.
The main difference between science and religion is not that one is true and the other is false. It's that one is falsifiable and the other is not.
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
Dr. Tim Flannery is someone whose work I have introduced all of my young relatives too. He may not be as well recognised outside of Australian and I can honestly say I don't always share his viewpoint; but he conveys the points well and with great passion.
Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki has been doing a scientifically credible, entertaining and honest version of what the mythbuster's do on radio in Australia for donkeys years and is pure gold when it comes to making science fun and accessible.
err!
Jak.
Today's kids are being taught that feelings are more important than logic, that 'social justice' is more important than the actual kind, that there's no difference between winning and losing, and that causality is just a conceit of the rich. They'll grow up and become government housing administrators, or city employees, or socialized/unionized construction workers. They'll grow up with a hatred of science, of objectivity, and of individuality, it will all be replaced by compassion, empathy and team spirit.
Sorry for your loss.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I know he's not a scientist per se, but David Attenborough had a huge influence on me as a child, along with BBC nature as a whole. As a child I'd watch them over and over and that interest passed over to the other sciences as a whole. He's the perfect person to get your kids into science as a whole. (I teach physics now).
I got the privilege of appearing on stage with Mr Wizard way back in gradeschool. Now there's someone that will be missed. He got us hooked on science in like 4th grade. That's what we need, not more people to fascinate us in college, we need to build interest in science in our youth much much earlier.
RIP Don Herbert
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Bill Nye, my kids have the theme song memorized.
Sid the Science Kid. Not bad really, drives the whole "it's not magic, figure it out!" thing.
And just to throw in some non-TV things:
Lego for the fine motor skills and figuring out how to make something cool
Find a sport your kid is into. I can't stand baseball and I like soccer (playing at least), I don't know if it's genetic or what, but my son is much the same. Sports are cool because of things like gravity and all his friends.
We can all agree or disagree with the statement that science and religion are incompatible - personally, I agree, because at least for the religious people I know, to be religious is to decide not to shine the same spotlight on one part of your life that you would shine on all of the rest - the light of falsifiability. Most religious people are unwilling to consider anything as capable of falsifying their beliefs. This is an inconsistency - why are these ideas separate and unsuitable for such scrutiny? I suppose this will be modded down as flamebait, too, but if the GP is "insightful", I'd rather be flamebait.
"God wants us to learn these things, that is why we are here"
If only more people believed in that same God.. or at least that said same God wants these same things, there'd be a whole lot less problems.
However, I take issue even with that statement, due to the second half. It seems like it is meant to be an answer to the question "Why are we here?"
To illustrate why I take issue with that.. I saw a cute little German book about gemstones earlier today. I opened it up somewhere in the middle, only to find references to where the gemstone is mentioned in the bible and whatnot (something about 12 breastplate stones? my memory of The Bible is entirely too vague to recall the details). So I flipped to the first page of text and it had this question and answer (from iffy memory from a translation from German):
That answer seemed silly to me (I'm agnostic-ish) at first... it doesn't answer the question of why they exist, it answers the question 'why did God put them on Earth', which wasn't asked. But then I realized that I wouldn't ever ask the original question anyway. I would ask what gemstones are made of, how they are formed, chemical composition, color ranges, any special characteristics (asterism? chatoyance?) etc. and simply admire the photos in the book taking them for what they are.. pretty sparklies. I wouldn't ask -why- a gemstone exists any more than I would ask why a grain of sand exists.
Similarly, no scientist would ask -why- we are here any more than -why- a gemstone exists; that's material best left to philosophers and, indeed, theologians.
When you say that "there is a lot of science that cannot be shown/demonstrated/repeated", you're not really talking about science - although there are certainly elements that we can't just 'show' (such as stating that a certain star contains much iron though we're not able to just scoop some up and show you), we can certainly scientifically infer them with high probability (spectral lines etc.) and more plausibility ("'cos God made it so").
Now if you move into the realm of where scientists say "we don't know (yet)", that's where you can certainly have room for "God did it"-type arguments. I'm not a big fan of those, but quite likely there's no way that we'll ever determine what caused the Big Bang event and saying "God did it" makes perfectly good sense to me - though it certainly doesn't mean I think we shouldn't try and figure it out anyway... which is where I'm glad your University taught you "God wants us to learn these things", even if I disagree with the second half.
Seriously. His show good eats does a wonderful job of investigating the science behind the food. He does so in such a way that makes you want to know more, which renders his detractor's accuracy claims moot. His show has helped me inspire my 5 year old daughter to question how things work the way they do. What better hero could you ask for?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I actually like watching Dr. Michio Kaku on the science channel's SCI-Q. He seems to take abstract topics (Quantum Mechanics, String Theory) or stuff out of science-fiction (like time travel) and answer them in a easy to understand (but not Sesame Street) level. Here's 10 example questions from the show's website: http://science.discovery.com/questions/michio-kaku/michio-kaku.html
There are a lot of people who work in science education and public outreach. Staff at museums and planetaria, for example. Outreach people from research facilities (here on Mauna Kea, just about every observatory has official outreach people). And people who just think what they do is so fun and cool they want to share it with people.
I'm fortunate enough to work in astronomy, and I love bringing my daughter up to the visitor station for stargazing or hiking, or video-chatting with her while operating or observing. I also volunteer at the visitor station, lead tours of the summit, and generally "reach out" to anyone who's interested. I don't get any observing time on the 8-meter I operate, but I just got offered some time on a 2-meter and am going to work with my daughter, my nephew and my neighbors' kids to come up with a project.
These are 8-14 year olds, so they can probably weigh in on whether we should look at asteroids, kuiper belt objects, supernovae, black holes, or whatever. But I started in the field when my daughter was 5, and even though the first few years she was mostly just wanting to look at stuff in the sky, and not caring so much about what it actually was, she's grown up knowing that her dad gets to do really cool stuff, instead of just sitting in a cubicle. Probably also doesn't hurt that she has autographed photos of a couple NASA astronauts she's met. :)
There are a lot of science outreach activities in our town, like AstroDay and Onizuka Science Day and robotics competitions and all that... plus public talks, the world's first 3-D planetarium, and... okay, okay, the whole farkin' island is one giant playground for any kid (or adult) who's into natural sciences at all.
Find your local science museums or science centers or observatories or planetaria or whatever, find out who handles the local robotics competition, etc. Plenty of unknown heroes out there.
Oh, one word of advice, though: don't expect the kids to go for your favorite science. I may be an astro-geek, and her mom's a social scientist, but my daughter tends more toward chemistry.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I don't understand the thinking behind several parts of your last paragraph - but I am deeply interested in why you think they are so:
- If god is omnipotent / all powerful etc - why do you need to tell others about him? Can he not do this himself if he felt it was the thing to do?
- If god is generous rewarding etc. - why is there evil in the world>=? Why does he allow situations to occur that turn good people into bad people? (trauma, post-traumatic stress etc.)
- Why heaven - why not just make the real world nice.
- Why do you believe you know the mind of god? (sorry if I read that wrong - but from your post you seem convinced you do). You may believe that god cannot be mistaken - but do you believe that you cannot be mistaken for thinking you know his mind?
I am deeply interested in hearing what you have to say on this.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Get them to follow F1. The competitive nature and the inherent coolness of racing cars will get them hooked. The breadth in sciences covered by the sport is pretty cool ranging from the biology of weight loss from dehydration of the drivers to the electronics behind precision timing. It is a breathtakingly awesome sport even when none of the competitors are performing well.
P.S. Be very careful to make sure they do not start watching any other programming on SpeedTV!
Cheers!
--
Vig
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
gotta go with Forrest M. Mims III. I know there are some people out there rolling there eyes because of his stance on intelligent design, but you are missing the point. This is the guy who wrote all the books about electronics radio shack used to sell. Those books are still available, although the price is a little higher now that the shack doesn't stock them. I just saw them at Fry's though, so I know they are readily available. I started reading those books and tinkering with electronics in the 4th grade. It gave me a lifelong love of electronics and science. I still rely on the stuff I learned from those books twenty years later. Check out his website. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, his inventions and experiments are exactly the kind of stuff I would want my kids to do.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
If you are looking for a science model for your children, find someone who as managed to integrate their belief in God with science.
Here's my ultra-short version:
1)The Bible uses parables to instill useful values. It is largely NOT literal. Children and simple adults believe it literally because they lack the capacity to grasp the deeper lessons present. This is okay, because the alternative methods of instilling the same useful values to a wide variety of people have no solid track record.
2) God created everything. Science helps us discover the method He used to do so. If God created all of existence, He created the physical laws governing existence, and we discover those laws with science
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
He tried his damnedest to kill the Cassini/Huygens mission that has given us knowledge about Saturn and Titan second only to the Voyager program. ("OMG teh evil Plutonium is going to be magically smushed up n an asplosion and kill us all!")
Never mind that the risks were virtually nonexistent, even if you didn't bother to weigh them against the knowledge we stood to gain. He's no different from the tin-foil hat crowd who tried to shut down the LHC with lawsuits because we might all get swallowed by a black hole.
Michio Kaku has little credibility in my book, because I have no idea whose side he's on... science's, or woo-woo Earth First nutcases.
Going back on topic here, what you really want is a way to get them into science. Kids are already curious and easily amused, so you've already won half the battle. Just get them science toys, videos, and equipment, and take trips to aquariums, science museums, and planetariums. I remember my first microscope. I was eight and I wouldn't put the damn thing down. You'd be surprised how much people get inspired by the sheer beauty of science. And if you really want to geekify them, get them Lego Mindstorms. A science hero to look up to usually comes after they start learning more and see who discovered what.
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Seeing as everyone else has Adam Savage, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins pretty well covered, and you already know about Carl Sagan and presumably Richard Feynman and J. Bronowski, I should probably add Brian Cox to the list.
He's a particle physicist at CERN, and has an unrealistic level of enthusiasm for absolutely everything. It seems a good bet that the physicist in Sunshine was based on him, especially considering that he was the science consultant for the film. He's in a whole bunch of documentaries enthusing about how great the latest scientific discoveries are.
Religions are falsifiable (science is the un-falsifiable thing: it is a tool, not a proposition. How do you falsify a hammer? How do you falsify science?). Any decent religious system has ideas of the type, if you do X, then Y will happen. Let's investigate a bit, and see what some religions say:
Buddhism: if you follow the eight-fold path, your suffering will end. Extremely testable. If you follow the eight-fold path, and you are still suffering, then man, they led you astray.
Tantric yoga: do these exercises and meditations and eventually you will have a kundalini rising (enlightenment). So if you do them, and you don't have a kundalini rising, then you know tantra is worthless (either that or your teacher sucks).
The Bible: Those who believe shall be able to do miracles, such as drink poison and not get hurt, or heal the sick (Mark 15:17). So if you follow Christ and you can't do those things, then......yeah, you've just falsified it.
Daoism: 99% of the battle of daoism is figuring out what you are supposed to do. That is an ancient Chinese way of teaching.....but, if you ever do figure out what it is you're supposed to do, then you will be able to tap into the mysterious power of the Dao. If you figure out what you are supposed to do, and do it, and still can't tap into that power, then you've just falsified Daoism.
Mormonism: fast and pray oft, grow in humility, and you will be filled with joy and consolation. I really like Mormonism because it is even more scientific: it says all over the place things like, "if you have faith, God will give you anything that is good." It gives examples of people who became good enough that God gave them anything they asked for, and it says that you can do it too. It even directly gives an example of how to test these claims, and verify/falsify them. I like it because the more clear the promises, the more easily it is falsifiable.
See? If all you are saying is that some being out there exists who affects life on earth in some undetectable way, then yeah, it's pretty pointless. But any preacher who preaches that doesn't know his religion.
Qxe4
In addition to names of the people themselves, can anybody recommend any good science documentaries/talks/books? I'd recommend the following:
If anyone can add to this list, I'd appreciate it. It'd be nice to seek out more science shows and related things.
I'd also recommend the following on YouTube:
(And now I need to ramble on for ages because Slashdot's software claims I have too few characters per line... A curious requirement. Just ignore this paragraph, it contains absolutely no meaningful information at all. Seriously, though, check out the above YouTube clips if nothing else. Really, Cosmos and A Short History of Nearly Everything should be given to everyone at birth...)
Browse www.ted.com. Personally I think everything about selfassembling nanomachines is fascinating.
No one had the time to mention Kari or Grant from the Mythbusters, but they had time for a 200 post off topic flamewar about religion and science? Yes not exactly post graduate education there, but the question was about "excited" and "heros". Whats not to like about Kari and Grant?
No one mentioned Shawn Carlson and the SAS?
http://www.sas.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Amateur_Scientists
At least Forrest Mims got like one comment, even if people shun him for his peculiar church beliefs (not exactly a very enlightened attitude).
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The main difference between science and religion is not that one is true and the other is false. It's that one is falsifiable and the other is not.
To put it more bluntly, when the scientist tells you water is hydrogen and oxygen and you say "prove it," there's an experiment to do just that. And for as many claims that science makes that you ask for proof of, it will be provided, until you're absolutely sick of it. There's a great book called a Short History of Nearly Everything that takes the great claims of science you learn in school and walks you back to how they were discovered and who did the work.
The priest shows you bread and wine and tells you it's the body and blood of christ and you ask him to prove it, you get your ears boxed and sent to the nuns.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
There's a cool show on the History channel called "The Universe". They have very intelligent and interesting people talking about science while entertaining with mind-blowing cgi graphics. Check it out.