EThos Column

jd

Did anybody read Fergus Cassidy' ethos column in the trib?
And does anybody know what exactly it is he is proposing.
He starts talking about "contexts" etc (amongst other stuff)-
and bamboo rods..
"Future horizons are too big, and too important, to be left purely in the hands of scientis"-he says..
well ok
and the then says we are all scientists at heart..
But I think I disagree with him there..
To put it another way , we can all hold a paint brush, and slap something together on canvas-I wouldn't call all the results "art"

ColinM

Science is the gathering and organising of knowledge in a structured manner. The word comes from the latin sciere, meaning to know.

We all gather knowledge and organise it within our minds as we go through life. Although some have a greater thirst for knowledge and understanding than others, I guess he means that we are all scientists in the sense that we all endeavour in some way to make sense of our environment by our interaction with it.

GuanYin

Is there a link for this article?

As a species I'd say we are all very curious, but in my experience we don't have a large proportion of open-minded, inquisitive, methodical, lateral-thinking people, even among the science community, which are traits I would rate as important for a scientist.

In fact, most people are the exact opposite. Ready to jump on any bandwagon and believe anything they read without any thought, questioning or experience. People tend to wonder about things yes, but unfortunately most of them wonder without asking any pertinant questions and take the first convenient answer that happens along.

jd

http://www.ethos.org/science.html