The Question

It’s the SCIRENS 1ST ANNIVERSARY on the interwebz! Whohoo! Exactly a year ago yesterday (February 26th) a newly formed group of sci-enthusiastic actresses posted a tweet asking what area of science most interests you. We’ve come pretty far since that question. Thanks to social media, thanks to YOU, we feel like we’ve had a positive impact in spreading S(science) T(echnology) E(ngineering) M(ath) news and laying the ground work for creating content that aims to both entertain AND inspire STEM literacy.

So yesterday, to mark our tweet-a-versary, we asked this:

The tweets we got back were fantastic — from the big universal questions to more STEM specific ones about such topics as energy, sustainability, space travel and how these questions even fuel the tweeter’s very career — so much so that I wanted to take a deeper dive into the topic.

Just how powerful is a Question?

As actors we live in the question. Our job is a “what if”. We are compelled to examine the facets of humanity in order to bring a character to life: “how do they feel, what they do, why would they say these words?“. We create imaginary circumstances and then ask how our characters would live in them. If you subscribe to the Method (school of acting), which I am currently studying, you go deeper into your own questions, discovering emotional truths and their triggers in order to bring a greater reality to the character you are portraying. I can say from personal experience, exploring my questions has been transformative.

So what sublime irony that SCIENCE is also rooted in ‘the question’. Everything in science begins with a why… our search to understand the nature of reality, our beginnings, our ultimate end. It is the question that leads to the hypothesis, the theory, the experiment and then potentially a new understanding of reality. The question illicits a movement of ideas, even change. So it is no surprise that the word question and quest have the same latin root Quaerere: To seek. The word itself promotes a journey.

My growing fascination with the idea of the question became catalyzed when fellow Sciren Tamara Krinsky posted the following KQED article on our feed: The Power of Interest Drives Learning. The article examines the nature of ‘Interest’ — an important topic especially as we are involved in a larger movement to promote ‘interest’ in STEM.

So what exactly is ‘interest’? The authors state that it is a psychological state of engagement with a predisposition to engage with these ideas, objects and events repeatedly. They continue with the observations that when we’re interested, we have greater focus and clarity on a topic. We are affected emotionally, often energized and invigorated. Being interested inspires critical thinking (though sometimes I would say that being overly interested in a topic causes me to fall prey to sensationalized science, but then again I’m dramatic). And most significantly to this post, if we are interested, we will ask questions, and more often.

These questions arise because (according to UNC researcher Paul Silva) ‘interesting things’ possess shared characteristics: they are novel, complex yet comprehensible. In other words, interest lies in fascinating new things we don’t completely grasp but understand on a basic level. Thus, there is a knowledge gap, a conflict between what we know and what we want to know. So we ask questions, and our knowledge grows, which leads to more questions. They call it the Virtuous Cycle.

We become knowledge seekers!

“Research has found that interest is a more powerful predictor of future choices than prior achievement or demographic variables,” University of Wisconsin researcher Judith Harackiewicz states. This is good news for girls who are interested in Math but didn’t get an A… if we can keep them interested.

So how do we drive it? How do we keep this Virtuous Cycle of curiosity and learning going? By exposing people to as many new ideas and subjects as possible? Encouraging passionate mentors who can lead by example? Yes to both. But it’s important to first acknowledge Silva’s point that something won’t be interesting if the basic comprehension of the thing don’t exist (which explains why my enthusiastic rants on quantum physics mostly fall on deaf ears). This is why finding a way to re-engergize the teaching of STEM topics in school and encouraging its appreciation (and learning) in adults, is paramount. Becoming STEM literate opens your eyes to the wonders of the world around us; it did for me.

Unfortunately we live in a culture of finite education. As Dr. Mathew Lieberman states: We move from being learners to being knowers. If you are an adult, (and you’ve graduated from school), your education is complete, right?  Learning is for children because their brains are still forming. But our brains can’t because they aren’t ‘plastic’ anymore.  Or are they? Recent research points to the contrary — new neural pathways can be constructed as an adult — and a fantastic new article in Aeon today points to future use of cognitive drugs to open up our brain’s plasticity to the levels of when we were a child.  Turns out that there is nothing static about our brains after all.

https://twitter.com/shiruken/status/571042852592947201

But that’s the beauty and the frustration of science — it’s always in flux. Because nothing is constant (even the speed of light), everything changes (entropy), is relative (Einstein) and can’t be fully measured (at least on a quantum level). So we ask questions, which leads to the quest to learn new things so we develop new tools that allow us to ask new questions. Another layer of the onion peeled back. but yes, stinging the eyes of many in the process.

Harvard entomologist, EO Wilson, in an interview in New Scientist, tips his hat to the stinging when he speaks of the dangers of finite truths. He points out that the tribal structure, religions in particular, have set in stone answers to the big questions, “bound in dogma”, that are almost always in conflict with the answers that other religions give. These finite answers create conflict. But he believes that this also displays humanities natural inclination to wonder about the nature of the universe, god and existence — that there could be a “unifying sense of search”.

We are born curious. We should be united by it.

Which brings me back to us Scirens and our convergence of the ‘questions’ of art and science. Great cinema does not dictate, does not shove an idea down our throat or emotionally manipulate — it inspires discussion, thought, feeling, even controversy. As perhaps the most famous character written once asked: To be or not to be?  And it’s not all about high art either — ‘the question’ persists in pop culture! Who will win the Oscar? Who will be voted off the Island? What color is the (damn) dress?! (yes, I had to go there).

Entertainment can inspire questions. And we Scirens want to create that type of content that both celebrates and inspires the big ones.  Because hopefully learning will be a natural by product.

So I challenge you to ‘live in the question’ — be curious, embrace what you don’t know and then seek knowledge to change it. You are never to old to go from knowing to learning. Because at the end of the day (we all love to use that phrase), we may never know anything really. But Lee Nichol’s quoting the work of physicist David Bohm says it best:

”Each advance in knowledge may serve as a temporary resting point, but ultimately should function as a portal to yet further comprehension and insight.” 

At this point, the question is the best answer we have.

#whatisyourquestion

Thank you to all who submitted a question and who share in our sci-enthusiastic journey! And a huge thank you to my fellow Scirens: Christina, Gia and Tamara who inspire me to question everything except for their support and their brilliance. Please share and comment on the post, we would love to hear your thoughts!

 

Taryn

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