Anyone else felt like this? (about Science)

Metatron

Metatron

Metatron

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Has anyone else ever felt like they've lost the wonder of science? It's like we take everything for granted and just assume scientific discoveries are part of inevitable progress, and that "they" will eventually just work everything out. Then I suddenly realized that I'm looking at a flat screen displaying real-time vivid colours and streaming video that only a few hundred years ago people would have thought was magic, and couldn't have even dreamt how it was possible. It's just amazing that we have harnessed the powers of nature, in ways that were impossible to conceive of only a short time ago.

So anyone else think we have lost the wonder or appreciation of science to a degree?
 
Not as a whole - the newest doohicks still give me that feeling, but once you get used to something it's hard to be astounded by it every time you encounter it. A few hundred years ago people would have been amazed at lightbulbs.
 
Years ago people got a few very different but innovative things in a spaced out fashion. Nowadays we release newer and updated versions of things. For example a new Nokia every couple of months.
 
You know what, I'm getting that wonder back now I'm training to be a science teacher.

You forget all the little things that have been discovered and worked on over the centuries and decades which have made up the vast bank of understanding we draw on today. It is all really very, very impressive.

The problem is that technology is now so intricate that even those designing a new gadget will only be working on one small part of it in detail, and will have a very limited idea of how another part works. One person in a company may have an overview on how a certain mobile phone works, but you can bet that he or she will struggle to understand in detail how each component works.

So even those in the design process will just give up and see some parts of technology as 'magic' (used to get that a lot when other electronic engineers would talk about analogue RF electronics - though mind you even the digital guys are having to get their head around all the high-freq stuff now too due to the increasing speeds).

What hope have the general public of trying to understand the intricacy and wonder of what is going on in all our black boxes of magic around the house? No wonder we just brush it off as 'tech' and ignore it.
 
sara said:
You know what, I'm getting that wonder back now I'm training to be a science teacher.
Click to expand...

Good, but please, please try to make sure that you portray that wonder to the students. Science is an amazing subject, but the way it's taught at the minute just makes it look boring and nobody takes an interest in it. You're taught what you need to pass exams, which isn't anything particularly useful or interesting at all.
 
You absolutely hit the nail on the head with this thread. I TOTALLY agree with what you have said because I often think about it and lecture my mates (who roll their eyes!).

Notice how we react to Space Shuttle missions? We act like its another Easyjet hop to Malaga.

You have to stop and think - here we have 7 people defeating Earths mavity and shooting off into SPACE to resupply an orbiting **SPACE STATION**.

And it doesnt have to be a Space SHuttle. Inside our gaming rigs are wonders of science - those amazing graphics cards we have that can control the millions of pixels on our screens to give us our shooters, our RPGs, our flight sims. Thanks to them we can escape the real world and immerse ourselves in that Airbus cockpit or fight dragons in some fantasyland.

The wonder of science never ends, its a pity we just take it for granted!
 
As with every single thing we worry about and find wrong with the world (except perhaps natural disasters) it is purely down to human nature.

If we were constantly amazed by something once we had an understanding of how it worked, we would never advance beyond it. We need to be comfortable in something before being bold or imaginative enough to move to the next thing.

I appreciate our current achievements, and certainly can empathise with the brilliance of those who achieved them, but as I see it is now my (our) job to do things even more wonderful, and given we have their hard work already under our belt, we certainly should be able to. Standing on the shoulders of giants an all that!
 
It's a wonder of the human mind that we can largely ignore amazing sights and experiences after we've seen them once or twice.

Take a dog for example, every time it sees a stick it's the most amazing thing ever, every time. We'd still be in caves saying ohhh wwwoooowww every time someone made fire if we were like that.
 
A number of people on here seem to think they know better than science. Imagine what scientific discoveries must look like to them, that they are so amazing that they don't even believe it's happened. I'd love to live in a simple little world like that where I know better :D
 
It's natural to take things for granted.

I'm fairly sure that most people know more about the ministry of magic than they do about the house of lords.
 
As steven hawking said, a few hundred years ago it would have been possible, albeit difficult, for one person to have an extensive knowledge of almost everything mankind had discovered and how it operates. Nowdays you're lukcy to find one person with an extensive knowledge in one area of a particular subject.

He phrased it much more eligantly than that though :p
 
Well I'm stood here iPad in hand living one part of. the Star Trek future 400 years early. Now all we need is interstellar travel to go with my PADD and I'm there.

Science is amazing but alas it has been replaced in most people by the XFactor and celebrity culture... :(
 
My wonder in science was severely damaged by misrepresentations both in the educational process and by various people trying to push certain philosophies as being better than others.

Science is a lot less fantastical when you understand how it should be used, and what it really means.

Of course, science and technology aren't necessarily the same thing, technology still fascinates me at times :)
 
I do think that the majority of people take science and technology for granted but then haven’t they always. With the rapid change of technological pace they want to see newer and more novel things without stopping to think about what has gone on to get them to this level. They care very little for the how and why, it’s become (or still is) when and where.

Having said that those that do take an interest know far more than say ten years ago because the internet has enabled them gain access to a vast amount of information. Whether some of them are real “experts” is debatable. It's easy to look it up online and look the part.

My love of science and technology has never waned in fact if anything has become greater as we continue to march forward at an ever quicker pace.
 
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