In this witty talk, Firestein gets to the heart of science as it is really practiced and suggests that we should value what we don't know or "high-quality ignorance" just as much as . And those are the things that ought to be interesting to us, not the facts. FIRESTEINWe'd like to base it on scientific fact or scientific proof. We have iPhones for this and pills for that and we drive around in cars and fly in airplanes. REHMSo what is the purpose of your course? So they don't worry quite so much about grades so I didn't have to worry about it. Get the best cultural and educational resources on the web curated for you in a daily email. I don't really know where they come from or how, but most interestingly students who are not science majors. We had a very simple idea. This was quite difficult given the amount of information available, and it also was an interesting challenge. REHMBecause ignorance is the beginning of knowledge? We fail a lot and you have to abide by a great deal of failure if you want to be a scientist. The beauty of CBL is that it provides a scaffolding that celebrates the asking of questions and allows for the application of knowledge. I think we have an over-emphasis now on the idea of fact and data and science and I think it's an over-emphasis for two reasons. FIRESTEINThat's a good question. And of course, we want a balance and at the moment, the balance, unfortunately, I think has moved over to the translational and belongs maybe to be pushed back on the basic research. REHMYou know, I'm fascinated with the proverb that you use and it's all about a black cat. Stuart Firestein: The pursuit of ignorance. He concludes with the argument that schooling can no longer be predicated on these incorrect perspectives of science and the sole pursuit of facts and information. Youd think that a scientist who studies how the human brain receives and perceives information would be inherently interested in what we know. And, by the way, I want to say that one of the reasons that that's so important to me is that I think this makes science more accessible to all of us because we can all understand the questions. And Franklin is reputed to have said, well, really what good is a newborn baby? I mean, this is of course a problem because we would like to make science policy and we'd like to make political policy, like climate or where we should spend money in healthcare and things like that. The pt. Orson Welles Explains Why Ignorance Was His Major Gift to Citizen Kane, Noam Chomsky Explains Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong, Steven Pinker Explains the Neuroscience of Swearing (NSFW). As neuroscientist Stuart Firestein jokes: It. If I understand the post-modern critique of science, which is that it's just another set of opinions, rather than some claim on truth, some strong claim on truth, which I don't entirely disagree with. At the Columbia University Department of Biological Sciences, Firestein is now studying the sense of smell. How does one get to truth and knowledge and can it be a universal truth? DANAThank you. For example, in his . Thank you so much for having me. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Hi there, Dana. Revisions in science are victories unlike other areas of belief or ideas that we have. And I'm just trying to push the needle a little bit to the other side because when you work in science you realize it's the questions that you really care the most about. I'm a working scientist. Absolutely. Stuart Firestein's follow-up to Ignorance, Failure, is a worthy sequel. Printable pdf. I put a limit on it and I quickly got to 30 or 35 students. In an honest search for knowledge, you quite often have to abide by ignorance for an indefinite period. Erwin Schrodinger, quantum physicist (quoted in Gaithers Dictionary of Scientific Quotations). I put up some posters and things like that. The difference is they ought to begin with the questions that come from those conclusions, not from the conclusion. In the following excerpt from his book, IGNORANCE: How It Drives Science, Firestein argues that human ignorance and uncertainty are valuable states of mind perhaps even necessary for the true progress of science. Stuart J. Firestein is the chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where his laboratory is researching the vertebrate olfactory receptor neuron. FIRESTEINWell, so I'm not a cancer specialist. Instead, Firestein proposes that science is really about ignorance about seeking answers rather than collecting them. In Dr. Firesteins view, every answer can and should create a whole new set of questions, an opinion previously voiced by playwright George Bernard Shawand philosopher Immanuel Kant. It's the smartest thing I've ever heard said about the brain, but it really belongs to a comic named Emo Phillips. REHMI know many of you would like to get in on the conversation and we're going to open the phones very shortly. Now I use the word ignorance at least in part to be intentionally provocative. When you look at them in detail, when you don't just sort of make philosophical sort of ideas about them, which is what we've been doing for many years, but you can now, I think, ask real scientific questions about them. A more apt metaphor might be an endless cycle of chickens and eggs. The first time, I think, was in an article by a cancer biologist named Yuri Lazebnik who is at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and he wrote a wonderful paper called "Can a Biologist Fix a Radio?" Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content. It's a big black book -- no, it's a small black book with a big question mark on the front of it. It is a case where data dont exist, or more commonly, where the existing data dont make sense, dont add up to a coherent explanation, cannot be used to make a prediction or statement about some thing or event. Recruiting my fellow scientists to do this is always a little tricky Hello, Albert, Im running a course on ignorance and I think youd be perfect. But in fact almost every scientist realizes immediately that he or she would indeed be perfect, that this is truly what they do best, and once they get over not having any slides prepared for a talk on ignorance, it turns into a surprising and satisfying adventure. And yet today more and more high-throughput fishing expeditions are driving our science comparing the genomes between individuals. And it is ignorance--not knowledge--that is the true engine of science. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. I have a big dog. Good morning to you, sir, thanks for being here. It's been said of geology. Reprinted from IGNORANCE: How It Drives Science by Stuart Firestein with permission from Oxford University Press, Inc. We work had to get facts, but we all know they're the most unreliable thing about the whole operation. The scientific method was a huge mistake, according to Firestein. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Stuart Firestein: The pursuit of ignorance, Ignorance: The Birthsplace of Bang: Stuart Firestein at TEDxBrussels, "Doubt Is Good for Science, But Bad for PR", "What Science Wants to Know An impenetrable mountain of facts can obscure the deeper questions", "Tribeca Film Institute and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Announce 2011 TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund Recipients", "We Need a Crash Course in Citizen Science", "Prof. Stuart Firestein Explains Why Ignorance Is Central to Scientific Discovery", "Stuart Firestein, Author of 'Ignorance,' Says Not Knowing Is the Key to Science", "Stuart Firestein: "Ignorance How it Drives Science", "To Advance, Search for a Black Cat in a Dark Room", "BookTV: Stuart Firestein, "Ignorance: How it Drives Science", "Eight profs receive Columbia's top teaching award", "Stuart Firestein and William Zajc Elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science", Interview "Why Ignorance Trumps Knowledge in Scientific Pursuit", Lecture from TAM 2012 "The Values of Science: Ignorance, Uncertainty, and Doubt", "TWiV Special: Ignorance with Stuart Firestein", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stuart_Firestein&oldid=1091713954, 2011 Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award for excellence in scholarship and teaching, This page was last edited on 5 June 2022, at 22:38. I had, by teaching this course diligently, given these students the idea that science is an accumulation of facts. For more of Stuart Firesteins thoughts on ignorance check out the description for his Columbia course on Ignoranceand his book, Ignorance: How It Drives Science. Why they want to know this and not that, this more than that. "The Pursuit of Ignorance." TED Talks. And you want -- I mean, in this odd way, what you really want in science is to be disproven. And these solid facts form the edifice of science, an unbroken record of advances and insights embodied in our modern views and unprecedented standard of living. With a puzzle you see the manufacturer has guaranteed there is a solution. By clicking Accept All, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Stuart Firestein joins me in the studio. General science (or just science) is more akin to what Firestien is presentingpoking around a dark room to see what one finds. FIRESTEINAnd the questions come and we get off on tangents and the next thing you know we've had a wonderful two-hour discussion. Now he's written a book titled "Ignorance: How it Drives Science." He has published articles in Wired magazine,[1] Huffington Post,[2] and Scientific American. If all you want in life are answers, then science is not for you. The majority of the general public may feel science is best left to the experts, but Firestein is quick to point out that when he and his colleagues are relaxing with post-work beers, the conversation is fueled by the stuff that they dont know. viii, 195. Then he said facts are constantly wrong. Stuart Firestein teaches students and "citizen scientists" that ignorance is far more important to discovery than knowledge. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies do not store any personal information. One kind of ignorance is willful stupidity; worse than simple stupidity, it is a callow indifference to facts or logic. 1. He has credited an animal communication class with Professor Hal Markowitz as "the most important thing that happened to me in life." As neuroscientist Stuart Firestein jokes: It looks a lot less like the scientific method and a lot more like "farting around in the dark.". Physics c. Mathematics d. Truth e. None of these answers a. FIRESTEINAnd a little cat who I think, I must say, displays kinds of consciousness. It's telling you things about how it operates that we know now are actually not true. This summary is no longer available We suggest you have a look at these alternatives: Related Summaries. He compares science to searching for a black cat in a dark room, even though the cat may or may not be in there. I don't work on those. REHMAll right. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. notifications whenever new talks are published. I'm Diane Rehm. drpodcast@wamu.org, 4401 Connecticut Avenue NW|Washington, D.C. 20008|(202) 885-1200. I mean I do think that science is a very powerful way of looking at and understanding the world. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". Tell us what youre interested in and well send you talks tailored just for you. I do appreciate it. And, you know, we all like our ideas so we get invested in them in little ways and then we get invested in them in big ways, and pretty soon I think you wind up with a bias in the way you look at the data, Firestein said. By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our. Finally, the ongoing focus on reflection allows the participants to ask more questions (how does this connect with prior knowledge? The speakers who appeared this session. Science doesnt explain the universe. Knowledge enables scientists to propose and pursue interesting questions about data that sometimes don't exist or fully make sense yet. Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.James Clerk Maxwell, a nineteenth-century physicist quoted by Firestein. Good morning, Christopher. FIRESTEINBut I call them case histories in ignorance. REHMAll right, sir. Quoting the great quantum physicist Erwin Schrodinger, he makes the point that to learn new things we need to abide by ignorance for an indefinite period of time. that was written by Erwin Schrodinger who was a brilliant quantum physicist.