BEING A SCIENTIST?

I like to think about science, and maybe the scientist, as a bit like one of these explorers who’s got a map of the world. It’s a flat map. They imagine a two-dimensional world and they’re going out exploring in the 1400s, 1500s, to map continents. And because it’s really a journey into the unknown, where you don’t know where you’re going, you have a map, but it’s not a very good one. You also have tools like telescopes, lenses which can help you to explore, to see things that maybe the previous generation of explorers didn’t before our better ships, better microscopes, better telescopes.

So, you go into new lands and try to map them out and get a better picture of the world that’s out there. I think one of the difficulties about explaining science is in

understanding what it’s like to do science. When we learn science in school, we tend to mainly learn facts about the world – but we don’t have to memorise them and that can make it quite boring. I found it boring anyway. In art, you learn, you’re taught to like, to play and to create all these things. But if you want to discover new places, you really have to throw yourself into the unknown. You will have tools that can help you, but you don’t know what you’re going to see.

It’s much more about the creative process of discovery, about going out into a place where you know that the things you’ve learned are wrong and you’re trying. You respect them, because people have gone before you and they’re brilliant people and you read carefully what they’ve done. But taking that to the next step, you have to go out and try and find things that might have been missed or

things that might have been wrong. So, it’s a mixture of humility and arrogance, like many things, one where you think “Maybe I can make a little contribution.” And you get on the boat with your team, because science is a team endeavour, and you go to this place where no one’s been. You try to discover something new. …