January 08, 2009

Science as Exploring the Unknown

One of the biggest challenges science outreachers face is to invite the public to consider science not just as the big pile of all the stuff we know, but rather as the process of figuring out stuff nobody knows yet.

This is a challenge because most people tend to view science as "knowledge", just as its rootword means in Latin, and they tend to view scientists as people who know a lot of stuff.

In this view, the main way to become a scientist is to study what has already been discovered--to learn a lot of stuff.

But at the university, scientists see themselves as people who not just smart in the sense that they know a lot of stuff, but also creative and ingenious at figuring out ways to test ideas about stuff we don't know yet.

That's one major reason why a public science venue on campus can be a vibrant place: it gives learners of all ages as chance to experience science as probing the unknown, within a community of scholars who see science as a process of sifting and winnowing through observation, experiment and analysis.