Anything can be interesting if approached in the right way.
Consider for a moment — what drives you to enjoy learning about one topic rather than another? Many of us, whether in school or our daily lives, prefer to learn, discuss, and explore some topics over others. For example, a spark of definite enthusiasm enters the eye of my oldest brother every time he begins to discuss war history. If you get him talking about logistical blunders made during the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of a Thanksgiving meal, you'd better just accept the fact that it may be well into the pecan pie before any other subject is discussed. But have you ever noticed that, even if you had no prior interest in Imperial Age supply-chain issues, if your dinner guest has enough zeal for his subject, you might just find yourself engaged (and happily so) in an obscure conversation you previously knew nothing about?
When we are drawn into a conversation like this, we might not even realize how much we're learning; we're simply pulled into the topic by the sheer enthusiasm of our counterpart, and if we're lucky to be speaking to someone who really knows their topic, by the time we're washing the dishes we might have picked up some interesting tidbits, maybe even one or two things which we can actually use in our daily lives. We don't even realize we're learning because it happens so effortlessly. You might find yourself going home that evening with an armful of borrowed historical fiction novels with a genuine enthusiasm for the subject. Next thing you know, you've read 20 books about that era, and come the next Thanksgiving dinner it might just be you with that spark-in-the-eye to discuss the foibles and downfalls of the Battle of Waterloo.
Take squirrel ecology: When I mention that phrase, does it initiate an upwelling surge of enthusiasm, a joy carried with you since childhood? An irrepressible desire to study the populations of squirrels and the implications they have upon our lives, both materially and theoretically? Well, maybe not. But what if I told you that a squirrel ecologist named Joel Brown has been using his study of squirrels to help develop a new, cutting-edge approach to fighting cancer at the Moffit Cancer Research Center in Florida? A little more intriguing, perhaps. Would it interest you to learn that he is using the same understanding of speciation, evolution, ecology, and carrying capacity used in the study of squirrels to contain, fight, and hold cancer cells in a state of stasis? Would it interest you to hear that using these ecological techniques of "species war" against cancer has led the Moffit Cancer Research Center to some astonishing results in patients with advanced and deadly cancer, helping many to live over three times as long as previous estimates? (I'd highly recommend the hour-long interview with Joel Brown — it's thrilling. You can find it here.)
How is it that I have no interest in squirrels, essentially no understanding of cancer research, and yet the interview with Joel captivates me? We could analyze many contributing factors; he's a highly knowledgeable, skilled presenter, and it's an intriguing proposition, to name a few. But what really hooked me is his sheer wonderment before the subject. You can tell that this isn't just a 9-5 job for Joel; it's a constant source of amazement and inspiration, and his awe before the complexities of the human body and the study of biology are infectious (pun intended).
We've all had to learn subjects which don't interest us; dusty tomes of bygone history, boring tables and charts of atoms we think will never matter to us (pun intended), rules of poetic verse which would be of greater use to a Victorian-era opera singer than to modern life — we face these subjects as students with a dejected sigh. We don't like them, but there's nothing we can do about it. Or is there?
What if we could reverse engineer that phenomenon of the Thanksgiving dinner conversation about the Napoleonic Wars, or the discussion about squirrel ecology and the fight against cancer — would these experiences reveal an underlying life-hack into making anything interesting? What if wonderment was not a result of new information being presented to us, but simply an attitude of the mind, a practicable world-view? For it is equally possible to gaze upon the greatest wonders of science and be unmoved as it is to gaze upon the stars and be overcome by the scope and majesty of the universe. As Einstein put it, “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
Cultivating a sense of awe before the sciences (or any topic) is what transforms them from being run-of-the-mill memorization of facts into a thrilling exploration of the magnificent. We’ve all seen images of cells under a microscope, but when was the last time you paused to reflect that your very body is composed of perhaps as many as 37 trillion cells – each independently organized, elegant, complete; performing myriad cellular processes at frequencies unimaginable?
Among our students exploring biology this year at LWHS, some of them had never looked through a microscope with their own eyes before. I wish you could have seen their faces during a recent lab when they saw the highly organized, brick-like structure of plant cells – complete with cell-walls, and visible chloroplasts. There were outcries of amazement, downright disbelief, and many happy smiles. We’re studying energy production, cellular respiration, cell division, genes, evolution, and other mainstays of the topic, but at the heart of our exploration lies the essential ingredient: Wonderment. Without it, science is dull and cumbersome. But with wonderment, the sciences become a window to the mysteries of the world. There’s so much to learn, so much to understand, so much to – as Einstein said – gaze upon, rapt in awe.
