The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scientific Curiosity

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This isn't a science textbook, though occasionally there are big concepts being explained that will still have you scratching your head, but conveys how science can (and should) be for everyone.

The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scientific The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scientific

Admitting one’s ignorance and making use of it in tutoring requires confidence. Like many beginning classroom teachers, I was anxious about my knowledge and authority when I began serving as a teaching assistant at UW-Madison in 2007. Needless to say, such anxiety did not make me comfortable with open-ended curiosity as a teaching tool. But when I began working at the writing center a couple years later, tutoring put me in a different frame of mind. Not having to worry about securing authority freed me up to use my ability to ask questions and my capacity to be interested to empower students.

He frequently resorts to "non science" to illustrate his points about science! For example, there is a chapter that is largely using science fiction films to illustrate scientific achievements. It is nonsense from top to bottom and one of the most poorly thought through books I have ever read. If anything it is more damaging to an inquiring and developing mind than it is beneficial. At several points reading this, my wife asked me what interesting facts I'd just learned and my reaction was usually "Erm..." Smith JL, Wagaman J, Handley IM. Keeping it dull or making it fun: Task variation as a function of promotion versus prevention focus. Motivation and Emotion. 2009; 33:150–160. doi: 10.1007/s11031-008-9118-9. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] Being interesting is, quite rightly, the coin of the realm in advanced scholarship. And I’ve absolutely, nerdily loved the opportunity to pursue my interests in poetic form and sustainable farming by writing a dissertation about organic metaphors in both fields. But I’m also grateful that I’ve been working in the Writing Center, because tutoring constantly reminds me, and indeed requires me, to look up and notice at least some of the other interesting things going on around me.

The Importance of Being Interested - Booktopia The Importance of Being Interested - Booktopia

But in reading this book, it's very obvious that Robin is a good ninety degrees left of me! Before I go any further, I need to point out that I'm under no illusions of my own neutrality. I’m not a natural conservative (either with or without a capital C) and on the "political compass" test, I get as close to the centre as makes no odds, but my own biases are clear to me; I've got no time for identity politics or pandering to what I've come to think of as the Modern Left. I was rather surprised by Robin's rather obvious political bias, not because it exists (he’s entitled to his own opinions) but because he’s an author of a book on cognition who simply doesn’t seem to recognise his own biases.Many people think science is for ‘others’. For people with an Einstein level IQ and those who were born with a quantum physics book in their hand. But science is everyone’s. Robin really goes a long way to show that and this book is beyond perfect to rekindle a curiosity in science. It can enrich your life and how you think, and can be nothing but a benefit to those who retain their curiosity about the world and the universe through science. Recently, I had the pleasure to interview Robin Ince to mark the publication of his new book. In the interview, we discuss in depth the role of science fiction in engagement with science, the role of comedy and cabaret in the communication of science, and attitudes towards offense in both science and comedy. You can listen here: