See Inside
An impenetrable mountain of facts can obscure the deeper questions
So if you meet a scientist, don’t ask her what she knows, ask her what she wants to know. It’s a much better conversation—for both of you.
This article was originally published with the title What Science Wants to Know.
Stuart Firestein is a professor and chair of biological sciences at Columbia University. He is author of Ignorance: How It Drives Science, which Oxford University Press is releasing this month.
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39 Comments
Add CommentFine article--but Newton surely didn't know it all either. China, the Arab world, the Maya and other civilizations had their own scientific traditions, very reputable ones by any standard. Even in Europe, it's hard to believe Newton was up on all the extremely advanced, technical, and rich botany (including medical botany and descriptive and taxonomic botany) of the time, to say nothing of other specialized fields. I am sure that no one ever really knew all the science of his or her time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBest wishes, E. N. (Gene) Anderson, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside
Dr. Firestein, your article connected to a message I would like our youth to understand. I produced a powerpoint for that audience, "Science a Puzzle and Adventure" Our organization provides free STEMM outreach for our area. I encourage that you a look at this powerpoint below, I think you will enjoy it. http://edoutreach.wpafb.af.mil/ed_outreach/pages/wow/the_brain_box.pdf Thanks you for the article, I reasonated with it. Bob Gemin, at Educational Outreach, WPAFB, Ohio.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"In science, every new discovery raises 10 new questions, as playwright George Bernard Shaw sardonically declared in a dinner toast to Albert Einstein."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTypical undeserved jab from someone in the humanities to those who work in the hard sciences. If each new discovery raises 10 new questions, then those 10 questions were unknown before and are known now: our total knowledge has increased.
Sometimes it seems that those outside science fail to understand the hard slog that is the search for knowledge.
"One crucial outcome of scientific knowledge is to generate new and better ways of being ignorant"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCongratulations, absolutely genial phrase!
What????
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article is talking about hard science, something that Newton invented himself and not the collections of disconnected facts that you mention.
Politically correctness at work, it seems. Newton was a genius, THE genius of his time.
Nicely done. However, I've spent some time trying to understand how some of the 'great problems' in science have arisen - I find that it is the enormous volume of inconsistent information that has accumulated over the past few hundred years that now defines scientific knowledge. Newton had a broad, deep and cohesive understanding of physics that now seems to elude scientists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I've focused on the dark matter 'problem', most often seen now as the question of what it could possible be and the search to discover it. Unfortunately, I find that the fundamental problem is that it most likely is a figment of physicists' imaginations, an artifact borne from a historical misunderstanding.
Very simply, the astronomers who established the requirement for dark matter did so because they misapplied the empirical 'laws' of planetary motion to vast distributions of massive objects, specifically spiral galaxies. It has never been formally established that the rotational velocity of stars in spiral galaxies should diminish as a function of their radial distance.
Please see my brief commentary, including references: http://sciencewithoutfiction.com/uploads/JDwyer.PDF
Great article. Atul Butte, a leading professor in bioinformatics at Stanford, told me yesterday he spends most of his time coming up with new questions to ask of all the data that is already out there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStay tuned for our interview with Dr. Butte at mendelspod.com.
"By this calculus, ignorance will always grow faster than knowledge".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf there is a finite amount of knowledge to be gained about the universe, then as knowledge increases, by definition ignorance must decrease.
If there is an infinite amount of knowledge to be gained about the universe, then increasing knowledge doesn't decrease the amount we don't know, but it doesn't increase it either.
Very well put. However, in the infinite case, in practice, increasing knowledge tends to increase our awareness of both our prior and newfound ignorance...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood point. But classical scientists (Galileo, Euler,...) were supported by royal institutes which didn't interfere with what scientist were doing. Nowadays, you have to be careful what topic you choose to work on, because if it is not what the big guys in the field think it is interesting then it might be difficult to survive. Scientist are human beings who also want to making a living while working on finding more questions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso a good point, but in earlier times scientists also had to be cautious of religious doctrine as well as preestablished ideas. Isn't the problem now exacerbated by the number of bureaucratic institutions, scientists and prior published research? There are certainly a lot of important scientists these days, along with so many more unqualified experts such as myself...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn old Sci-Fi tale spoke about that somewhere in the universe, a computer exists that knows everything, and can give an answer to any question. Some scientits start asking questions to the computer, and after a lot of silences as the only answer to the questions, the machine emitted a warning: "To make a right question, you must know most of the answer". Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are some basic illusions we are suffering from our reality of observation and a tends to limiting calculus on which arm chair theoretical scientists are giving us mathematical models . If we apply plain thinking on let us say --universe finite or infinite,then our logic of common sense may tell us infinite. So till we are proving conclusively finite--let us adopt infinite universe. Long time back it was discovered that vacuum energy exists in casimir experiments but we fail to connect it with dark energy. Now we have to give NOBEL PRIZE for dark energy people for their wrong theory of accelerating universe on wrong stretching theory of wave length of light waves in red shift explanation. Are we mad or what? DURGADAS DATTA long back said that our outside antimatter universe on opposite entropy path is producing gravitoethertons or dark energy by annihilation of matter and antimatter and injected into our universe in non isotropic field swirling and whirling all galaxies and stars which we failed to notice and applied NEWTONS EQUATION without correction factor of permeability factor as in COULOMBS LAW. So revised NEWTONS EQUATION is F=P.G.M.m/R.R where P is factor of permeability of gravitoetherton soup. It may be possible that our calculation of dark energy and dark matter is wrong due to the above effects as declared by DURGADAS DATTA. If we DO NOT come out from EINSTEIN IDEAS OF RELATIVITY AND ISOTROPIC UNIVERSE ON MAXM LIGHT SPEED ASSUMPTIONS WITH LAWS AND CONSTANTS NOT VARIABLE AS SUGGESTED BY EINSTEIN BUT WRONG AS PER NEW IDEAS OF DURGADAS DATTA ,THEN WE CAN NOT TAKE SCIENCE OUT FROM TOTAL INCONSISTENCIES OF EINSTEIN,PENROSE,HAWKING ETC ETC. ROGER PENROSE ALREADY DECLARED PHYSICS WRONG .ALL CONSTANTS ARE VARIABLE ALONG WITH SPEED OF LIGHT NOT ULTIMATE IN VARIABLE FIELD GRAVITOETHERTONS SOUP OF FIVE GOD PARTICLES--FOUR FOR FOUR FORCES AND ONE FOR MASS CREATION. THIS IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD. MEGA UNIVERSE IS INFINITE WITH INFINITE SUCH TWIN UNIVERSES WITH LAWS AND CONSTANTS ARE INFINITE POSSIBILITIES . SO THEORY OF EVERYTHING IS NOT THERE AND FORGET TO VISUALIZE EACH REALITY . NOBEL PRIZES WERE GIVEN WRONGLY ON BIG BANG THEORY AND NOW WRONG WAVE STRETCHING RED SHIFT THEORY OF ACCELERATING UNIVERSE. Due to opposite entropy path ,one universe approaching tends to zero entropy will bounce and on CP VIOLATION again two universes will form and this will repeat again and again for eternity and by chance suitable tuned laws may produce intelligent life etc etc etc.--durgadas.ddatta@gmail.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if anyone out there remembers what KISS means.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre Photons limited to the speed of light because their mass (tho mini) limits it?
If the photon does not strike the eye, or the lens of the telescope, or the surface of our planet, Is it then not then "dark" and therefore not visible?
If photons are not detected because they do not aproach us, and they do have some (minimal) mass, then what?
George Snyder
One more comment:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes gravity have to be magically complex?
Maybe it is as simple as everything in the universe sucks!
George
"One way scientists have tried to cope with this mountain (of information) is by becoming more and more specialized, with limited success. As a biologist, I wouldn’t expect to get past the first two sentences of a physics paper. Even papers in immunology or cell biology mystify me—and so do some papers in my own field, neurobiology. Every day my expertise seems to get narrower. So scientists have had to fall back on another strategy for coping with the mountain of information: we largely ignore it."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not only that "we largely ignore it", for that presumes we know that "it" is "out there", in some way, specific enough for us to know that it is "out there". In my view, it is more a matter that new findings and new ways of thinking about them are flooding in all the time, and nobody can stay up-to-date in that ever-changing state of affairs.
One possible solution could be a general science classifier / dataminer...but people would have to milk it periodically for meaning.
I remember one guy who pretended to know a lot about general intelligence...and to be fair, he was brilliant, and knowledgable, albeit shamefully arrogant in his expertise. I not not know until several years later the limits of what he pretended to know so well. That is an inevitable result of mountains of information, a flood tide of new findings and our naturally finite means to know it all.
"Of late this side of science has taken a backseat in the pubic mind..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt least that's what my hardcopy says. Over reliance on spell check can lead to hilarious results. I'm glad to see someone caught and corrected it. The pubic mind is confused enough, as it is.
Great article. It is a different way of looking at stuff. Seeing the space and wondering what should be in it. The more I know and learn that more vast becomes my ignorance sensing there is so much more to learn still. If we know everything we can learn nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Peta_de_Aztlan
Galileo was almost burned at the stake for heresy, so there was definitely *some* interference with his work. ;-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe word 'public' in the on-line edition [penultimate paragraph; the phrase ...... science has taken a backseat in the public mind....] appears as '.. in the pubic mind' in the print edition. Does Professor Firestein have a subliminal message for his readers in traditional print but not in electronic media?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut seriously, a very enlightening article from an original thinker -- obviously with a great mind.
Somewhere in your statements there appears a contravention of the Second Law of Thermodynamics as it relates to the accumulation of both knowledge and ignorance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegarding: "scientists have had to fall back on another strategy for coping with the mountain of information: we largely ignore it" -- Science librarians have not been ignoring this mountain. They have developed ways to help scientists cope with the piles. Ask them how.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--barbara@TheAccessPoint.INFO
As Samuel Johnson stated:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information about it."
Let's not forget about the latter; that's where the research librarian or information specialist as they are sometimes called comes in.
A fine article indeed. Without doubt it requires much courage to say that "I can’t grasp much of immunology even though I have a fancy Ph.D., but the wonderful thing is that most immunologists can’t either—no one knows everything any more." I would like to rephrase the last part as "no one knows anything any more." Most of the time most of us simply pretend to know. Just a few simple and innocent questions are sufficient to expose our ignorance. Facts will not help to fill the emptiness of our being. Only understanding will. Few grams of nutrition are hidden in tonnes of fibre. The fire contained in the digestive acids separates the essential from the nonessential. The intelligence of body absorbs to essential and discards the non-essential. This leads to health and vitality in the body. Similarly, few grains of wisdom may be hidden in thousands of words or millions of our sensory perceptions. The fire of discrimination can help to separate the truth from false. The reflective power of human mind can help in absorbing the essential wisdom and discards the non-essential facts. This could very well lead to peace and tranquillity of the mind. Unfortunately, however, we are only engaged in accumulating facts which only improves our position among our peers and pamper our ego. The inner emptiness (or ignorance if you prefer) remains and indeed grows larger. Only the supreme understanding of our own supreme nature can instantly and forever fill the inner emptiness. But we waste our precious life in trying to understand the outer world without paying any attention to understanding our own Self. Is it a wonder that the "fancy" Ph.D. becomes a burden?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgood ppt
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, I just picked up a hard copy and noted the 'pubic' error. Then a couple of pages on under Hopeful Vision the word Once is used instead of One. That is not the first scientific journal I have discovered errors in lately, and doesn't say much for the standard of proof-reading. It reflects on the eminence of such journals if the authors and publishers have to leave it to dumb clucks like me to notice them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"scientists have had to fall back on another strategy for coping with the mountain of information: we largely ignore it" We don't realise how important is information about information. This is part of the development of intelligence. It may be that intelligence is a force of nature that counteracts the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Take a teenager's room, it progressively becomes untidy. Why? You can liken this to the 2nd Law in operation. But it takes information and intelligence to tidy it up and put things back into place. The cheaper this process becomes the easier it becomes. Artificial intelligence allows us to do this. Taking a long term view, the Universe starts off in a state of chaos and ends up in a highly ordered state.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a current Elementary Education major, and future Elementary school teacher, this article really speaks to me. I appreciate the idea that “everyday there is far more we know we don’t know.” To me, this quote is written for learners of all ages. As I learn and grow along with my students, I too will have the opportunity to be curious and pose questions about the scientific areas around me. Science has never been my strong point, and this article highlights how this is acceptable. This article demonstrates how science is based more on posing questions, researching, and working toward new discoveries rather than arriving at one solid correct answer. I like the idea of viewing science as a puzzle because it emphasizes how science is a process of continual learning, when one answer is agreed on the need for further study is diminished. By viewing science as a concept that is open to multiple opinions, students are much more likely to be willing to submit their ideas and to put forth the effort to learn. Ignorance really is bliss.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article was very interesting. I am a student teacher, and this article really helped me asses the way in which I can address any amount of material to my students. We are taught in our methods courses to ask questions following the blooms taxonomy, so that our students are able to think cognitively. Asking questions is very imperative to the science experience, so that you are more willing to go further in the lesson and look up information, therefore, keeping the students intersted in the subject, making it fun and interesting. There are many different ways of looking at stuff.The "mountain of information" can stress out a scientist, with the amount of knowledge that is required. I liked the idea that the author presented strategies to maintain this information.Being "ignorant" to the material in order to find out what you want to know and not what you already know is the key to acquiring knowledge in science. The more you know and learn the more enormous your ignorance should be so that it inspires you to learn much more. A great quote this article reminded me of was, "If we know everything, we can learn nothing". This speaks great measure to the amount of ignorance you should have toward a subject so that you are able to have a different lens on the whole idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello, I am a student. What is the use of the 50 million research papers if no reads them, are they are irrelevant?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI really enjoyed this article. As a future Elementary school teacher I feel that I can use this article in my classroom. One statement that was made in the article that really stood out to me was, "This perspective on science -- that it is about the questions more than the answers -- should come as something of a relief. It makes science less threatening and far more friendly and, in fact, fun." I really liked this statement. As a teacher I want my students to have fun when learning science. Growing up I was taught that science is a large amount of information that you must learn in order to understand it. This is the reason why I never liked science. This statement really emphasizes how important it is to ask question instead of knowing all the answers when dealing with science. I will be able to learn along with my students by asking questions. I feel that this will help my future students enjoy science more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"What makes a scientist is ignorance." I found this quote to be very interesting because when you think of ignorance you think of someone who is not knowledgeable. I would consider scientists to be very knowledgeable. However, when I thought about this deeper I realized that it is impossible for scientists to know everything about science or even a particular science topic. Because of this ignorance, scientists will want to get to know more and become curious. To find the answers to their curiosity and questions they will want to go explore and experiment. This whole process is science and what started it all was ignorance about a certain topic! For these reasons I agree with the above quote that what makes a scientist is ignorance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne thing I found interesting about this article was when Firestein said that ignorance is what makes a scientist instead of knowing a lot of information. I agree with the fact that he said that ignorance is inlclusive, because I feel that in a classroom, students would be more open for discussion. I know from personal experience that I am timid when I am trying to learn something from someone and they seem like they know everything. I feel that through ignorance, students will find the classroom comfortable and less overwhelming when it comes to discussing science. Also, I like the emphasis he made on asking questions in science versus worrying about finding the answers. Inquiry is all about questions, and if I want my students engaged in inquiry, they need to be comfortable asking questions they do not know the answer to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a future educator, this article opened my eyes to the importance of asking students questions, but also modeling the value of questioning in relation to finding one answer. This aligns with the theme the article is trying to promote about science. "So, if you meet a scientist, don't ask her what she knows, ask her what she wants to know. It's a much better conversation--for both of you" (quoted from the article). The article supports this by describing ignorance as a key component to scientists and how important new discoveries are. I agree with this article, in that sometimes we get so depended on one answer and are not open to new ideas. This prohibits us from gaining new knowledge. I feel that we should be aware of this especially when teaching so that we can encourage questioning in the classroom to make lifelong scientists!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI feel that this article did a great job of defining ignorance in the sense of not knowing the answer to every question. As an educator I find it important for students to realize that not everything is black and white and that there is a lot to be learned. Learning comes from asking questions and having curiosity to want to engage in inquiry. I feel that it is important to answer questions to be able to develop more questions about the matter. Sometimes there needs to be some form of an answer to be able to expand on a topic and ask questions about it. For example, if I asked how many seasons are there, I'd like the answer of 4. Then, I can ask questions about why there are only 4 and what defines a season. We should always question science though, because maybe they aren't accurate, maybe there's more than 4 seasons. Asking questions will get students farther in life than just taking everything at the surface level.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“What makes a scientist is ignorance,” this may cause some people to wonder what is meant by this. What is ignorance anyway? I believe this article makes this statement to show that asking questions and wondering about phenomena is science. You do not have to know all the answers to be a scientist. The article further suggests that “In science, every new discovery raises 10 new questions,” making science more about the questions than the answers, leading to practicing scientific inquiry. This result leads to more ignorance or unknown knowledge or inexperience and leads to fewer answers. This ignorance allows the opportunity for each of us to grow as scientists and expand our knowledge. When we explore and take interest in science, we find more information leading us to ask more questions. Science is a never ending process and there are no clear answers, only more and more questions. The idea of encouraging others to ask questions in science is something I will definitely take and implement in the classroom.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"So if you meet a scientist, don't ask her what she knows, ask her what she wants to know. It's a much better conversation -- for both of you." The best part about this quote and about this article is that it raises the argument that anyone can be a scientist. As a future elementary school teacher, believing in my kids, and having my kids believe in themselves, is priceless. Everyone has the ability to ask questions, so we all have the potential to be scientists! For struggling students with low self-esteem, presenting science to them in a way that is this familiar may be just what they need to fall in love with the subject. I love the way ignorance is framed in this article. Up until this point, I had always heard the word "ignorant" used in a negative context. However, this article allowed me to view this word in a totally different light...a light that is much more appealing and forgiving!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe part of the article I really enjoy is when Firestein points out how questions put us in the thick of things and how questions are more interesting than answers. Through the support of the various quotes used in the article questioning seems to be the ideal choice for all scientists. This is especially true in the scientific inquiry process where questioning is used through the whole procedure from the beginning to the end. I think this article provides good insight into scienfitic thinking and as a future teacher it allows one to understand how questioning is a good thing for students to do during their scientific experiments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA point that really stood out to me is that "knowing a lot is not what makes a scientist. What makes a scientist is ignorance." This stuck out to me because while I was in grade school, scientists were always perceived as knowing all there was to know about science (or at least the science that is in there field of study). But, as I learn more about inquiry, I have realized that this statement is definitely correct. The way that scientists gain all there knowledge is from asking questions and discovering the answers. With that in mind, anyone can be a scientist! I am studying to be an elementary teacher, and I want my students to realize just that! When my students are baking cookies with there parent(s), I want them to question "why do we use this colored pan" or "why does spraying this on the pan make the cookies not stick". By asking these questions, they are setting themselves up for inquiry and, in turn, being scientists!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this