It's outrageous the number of people we call scientists today, even the definition of a scientist in our dictionaries is questionable provided we let the truth of science prevail. Our self-imposed meaning of science has taken off the curtain that separated scientists from others--today we find it difficult to draw a line of separation between a scientist and an artist, and a poet, and a writer etc. Most people spend the most part of their lives in schools studying what someone wants them to know ignoring what they could learn outside the classroom, or perhaps anything which is not yet known to the world around and beyond. This is the curtain that separated scientists from those in other fields of study.... Science is like being on a journey that has no end and generally not built upon purposeful ideas such as job opportunities or financial accomplishments. Rather it's to feed the flourishing curiosity and anxiety to know beyond the known, to discover, to see what the eyes of others haven't, to taste the life beyond the superficial, to probe and to acquire so much knowledge that in the end we could as individuals through painstaking ideas make sagacious predictions of happenings that could be experienced due to our current observations being subjected to our knowledge. This is the journey that caught Einstein on his sick bed scribbling equations when he had only few days to live, he saw it wiser than writing a will.
Who is a scientist? Who is a technician?
A technician is a highly trained person whose job is to apply known techniques and principles in getting work done. He studies these principles laid down by others who didn't gear to settle on the knowledge from others but to seek the unknown. Hence the technician deals with the known while the scientist deals with the unknown. A scientist is therefore a person who seeks the true nature of physical reality, though some aspects of science are getting beyond the physical, merging with psychology and appreciating spirituality.
The technicians do well in converting ideas into materials, tools, machines, services that keep us going and growing. They make out a great deal of importance from the knowledge received. They make the scientists realize the relevance of their discoveries when they see them manifest. The connection between the two is like our feeding relationship with green plants. Green plants produce organic food substances such as starch from inorganic substances, water and carbon-dioxide. Our part is to use the food they are producing.
It will be beautiful if one can be both a scientist and a technician; we can experiment to develop ideas, discover a lot about our physical world and apply to see how effective the ideas could be. Every scientist will apply his findings perfectly since no one knows better than the founder of an idea, of a truth (it’s easier to live by your own rules than to live by rules by another). He can apply it in a better way than a technician, and could even engineer ways to advance and make the discovery better for his deeper understanding. The technician could also have a different look into the principles and techniques he knows. He could wander about the principles to find ways to get it work faster or easier. In this case the technician is also being scientific and this will help develop our country. U3nfortunately we aren't sure we even have scientists here; not even science teachers can be easily called scientists.
History tells us all scientists at a time were teachers. They taught others what they discovered, explained theories discovered by other scientists to their students. Does it mean all science teachers are scientists? No, a big no! In my country Ghana, most science teachers are technicians as well. They gather information from books in accordance to the school syllabus and pass it on to their students. They do this as a job; to earn some good money with no sense of enthusiasm guiding them... they are never passionate about the subject. The big dream of training scientists in Ghana will never be met until the right teachers--scientists who want to share their knowledge come on board.
When that happens, and when the ministry of education wants to impart the science ideology into the students, then science will be studied in my country. All we do now is mere history, storing information that is never used in the mind.
There is absolutely no need to keep the science knowledge stale. The expansive universe and all in it must be respected by expanding the subject, updating and correlating ideas perfectly so that students now wouldn't do the same old science practical done by others a decade ago. Science is meant to be a reality of understanding the world and solving its problems. We are unfortunately unable to go on that thread mill with our problems because we all want the jobs, every science student is aspiring for a job in a company to apply what he has studied for earnings.
For now most science teachers in my country are technicians, and their job is to memorize scientific information from books to share with students... no need for researches. These teachers had similar form of education years ago, and with so much in their mind, they can pour into our desperate minds...all we can afford is to acquiesce . But this can't be science for its lack of doubt. Science is doubt, and students should be allowed to explore beyond the expected. A scientist is no Rabbi to be buried in a grave of limitations subjected by others, doing the will of others.
Isidor I. Rabi, Nobel Prize winner in Physics and the former Chairman of the Physics Department at Columbia University wrote:
We don't teach our students enough of the intellectual content of experiments--their novelty and their capacity for opening new fields....My own view is that you take these things personally. You do an experiment because your own philosophy makes you want to know the result. It's too hard, and life is too short, to spend your time doing something because someone else has said it's important. You must feel the thing yourself...
As upcoming scientists, we need some independence in the methods of study and material to study. Do not restrict us to the syllables, and give us some room for doubting what you teach us, let us know all you are saying are perceptions of others but their validity is the fact that those perceptions work well in various fields in making life easy. Tell us science is easy and we could one day disprove some facts or make them better. We need to realize we are the "science", and that science is not a bunch of information. Trigger that part of our mind that leads us questioning every minuscule of observation and anything you teach us. This is what will make us scientists.
The lab technician, the chemist, the doctor, the engineer and the science teacher are still technicians working solely with the principles and techniques acquired in school. The augment received in class from others seems to be the holy grail for them, and anything outside is alien. To be a scientist is the easiest but its method of teaching has scared a lot of potential students fearing the complexity of calculation system never applied in our daily lives.
In one of our talks about science and education, three students confessed aspiring to do science because their teacher taught them rightly. Although he spent less than a year with them, he's left them in an ocean of passion for science. What did this teacher tell them to feel this way for the subject most feared? One of them said," he once told us all he taught was just information and that which we make of it is the knowledge, science knowledge is therefore subjective to every individual". We realized the teacher was a true scientist to have made them realized they could go on the journey finding their own faith, and choosing what to believe and what not to believe.
The realization of the veiled truth in our physical world must be met by being true scientist in order to find ways to walk the walk of the universe we find ourselves. Let the doctor know he is a technician when he settles only on the known, disregarding the essence that there is a light beyond what is known. And let the mechanical engineer know that classical mechanics still needs some beginners’ minds, and the chemist, and all who want to be called “scientists”. There is a light beyond the boarders of the known.
Lets traverse this path together...lets do it together.
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