I'm going to try and explain why it is that perhaps we don't understand as much as we think we do. I'd like to begin with four questions. This is not some sort of cultural thing for the time of year. That's an in-joke, by the way. But these four questions, actually, are ones that people who even know quite a lot about science find quite hard. And they're questions that I've asked of science television producers, of audiences of science educators -- so that's science teachers -- and also of seven-year-olds, and I find that the seven-year-olds do marginally better than the other audiences, which is somewhat surprising.
Pokušat ću objasniti zašto možda ne razumijemo onoliko koliko mislimo da razumijemo. Volio bih početi sa četiri pitanja. Ovo nije neka kulturološka stvar za najbolje doba u godini. Ovo je, usput, interna šala. Ali ova četiri pitanja smatraju teškima čak i ljudi koji znaju prilično puno o znanosti. To su pitanja koja sam postavio producentima znanstvenih TV emisija, publici znanstvenih edukatora -- dakle, nastavnicima znanosti – kao i sedmogodišnjacima, i otkrio sam da sedmogodišnjaci marginalno bolje odgovaraju od drugih skupina, što je donekle iznenađujuće.
So the first question, and you might want to write this down, either on a bit of paper, physically, or a virtual piece of paper in your head. And, for viewers at home, you can try this as well. A little seed weighs next to nothing and a tree weighs a lot, right? I think we agree on that. Where does the tree get the stuff that makes up this chair, right? Where does all this stuff come from? (Knocks)
Prvo je pitanje, i mogli biste si ga zapisati, bilo na list papira, fizički, ili na virtualni list u vašoj glavi, a za gledatelje kod kuće, pokušajte i vi. Malena sjemenka teži gotovo ništa, a stablo teži mnogo, zar ne? Mislim da se slažemo. Odakle drvo dobiva građu koja čini ovu stolicu, dobro? Otkuda dolazi sva ta stvar? (Kuca)
And your next question is, can you light a little torch-bulb with a battery, a bulb and one piece of wire? And would you be able to, kind of, draw a -- you don't have to draw the diagram, but would you be able to draw the diagram, if you had to do it? Or would you just say, that's actually not possible?
A sljedeće pitanje je možete li upaliti malu svjetiljku pomoću baterije, žaruljice i jednog komada žice? I biste li mogli nacrtati – ne morate crtati, ali da li biste mogli nacrtati dijagram toga da morate, ili biste samo rekli, da to nije moguće?
The third question is, why is it hotter in summer than in winter? I think we can probably agree that it is hotter in summer than in winter, but why? And finally, would you be able to -- and you can sort of scribble it, if you like -- scribble a plan diagram of the solar system, showing the shape of the planets' orbits? Would you be able to do that? And if you can, just scribble a pattern.
Treće pitanje je zašto je ljeti toplije nego zimi? Mislim da se vjerojatno možemo složiti da je ljeti toplije nego zimi, ali zašto? I konačno, da li biste mogli -- i možete šarati, ako želite -- skicirati dijagram sunčevog sustava, prikazujući oblike planetnih orbita? Biste li to mogli? Ako možete, samo skicirajte uzorak.
OK. Now, children get their ideas not from teachers, as teachers often think, but actually from common sense, from experience of the world around them, from all the things that go on between them and their peers, and their carers, and their parents, and all of that. Experience. And one of the great experts in this field, of course, was, bless him, Cardinal Wolsey. Be very careful what you get into people's heads because it's virtually impossible to shift it afterwards, right? (Laughter) I'm not quite sure how he died, actually. Was he beheaded in the end, or hung? (Laughter) Now, those questions, which, of course, you've got right, and you haven't been conferring, and so on. And I -- you know, normally, I would pick people out and humiliate, but maybe not in this instance.
OK. Sad, djeca do ideja dolaze – ne od učitelja, kako učitelji često misle, već, u stvari, zdravim razumom, iz iskustva svijeta koji ih okružuje, od svega onoga što se događa između njih i njihovih vršnjaka, i njihovih karijera, i njihovih roditelja, i svega toga, iskustva. Jedan od velikih stručnjaka na tom području je bio, Bog ga blagoslovio, kardinal Wolsey. Budite vrlo pažljivi kad ulazite u ljudske glave jer je poslije praktički nemoguće to promijeniti, zar ne? (Smijeh) Nisam sasvim siguran kako je zapravo umro. Jesu li mu na kraju odsjekli glavu ili ga objesili? (Smijeh) E, ta pitanja na koja ste, naravno, točno odgovorili, i niste se dogovarali, i tako dalje, i ja – znate, normalno bih prozvao ljude i ponižavao, ali možda neću ovoga puta.
A little seed weighs a lot and, basically, all this stuff, 99 percent of this stuff, came out of the air. Now, I guarantee that about 85 percent of you, or maybe it's fewer at TED, will have said it comes out of the ground. And some people, probably two of you, will come up and argue with me afterwards, and say that actually, it comes out of the ground. Now, if that was true, we'd have trucks going round the country, filling people's gardens in with soil, it'd be a fantastic business. But, actually, we don't do that. The mass of this comes out of the air. Now, I passed all my biology exams in Britain. I passed them really well, but I still came out of school thinking that that stuff came out of the ground.
Sjemenka je vrlo teška i, u suštini, sva ta građa, 99 posto te građe dolazi iz zraka. Sad, garantiram da bi nekih 85% vas, ili bi postotak bio manji na TED-u, reklo da dolazi iz zemlje, a neki, vjerojatno dvoje od vas, prišli bi mi poslije i raspravljali, govoreći kako, u stvari, dolazi iz tla. Kad bi to bilo točno, imali bismo kamione koji voze uokolo, i ljudima pune bašte zemljom. To bi bio fantastičan posao. No, zapravo to ne činimo. Masa ovoga dolazi iz zraka. Sad, položio sam sve ispite iz biologije u Britaniji, položio sam ih zaista dobro, ali sam ipak završio školovanje misleći da sve to dolazi iz zemlje.
Second one: can you light a little torch-bulb with a battery bulb and one piece of wire? Yes, you can, and I'll show you in a second how to do that. Now, I have some rather bad news, which is that I had a piece of video that I was about to show you, which unfortunately -- the sound doesn't work in this room, so I'm going to describe to you, in true "Monty Python" fashion, what happens in the video. And in the video, a group of researchers go to MIT on graduation day. We chose MIT because, obviously, that's a very long way away from here, and you wouldn't mind too much, but it sort of works the same way in Britain and in the West Coast of the USA. And we asked them these questions, and we asked those questions of science graduates, and they couldn't answer them. And so, there's a whole lot of people saying, "I'd be very surprised if you told me that this came out of the air. That's very surprising to me." And those are science graduates. And we intercut it with, "We are the premier science university in the world," because of British-like hubris. (Laughter) And when we gave graduate engineers that question, they said it couldn't be done. And when we gave them a battery, and a piece of wire, and a bulb, and said, "Can you do it?" They couldn't do it. Right? And that's no different from Imperial College in London, by the way, it's not some sort of anti-American thing going on.
Drugo pitanje, možete li upaliti svjetiljku s baterijom, žaruljicom i komadom žice? Da, možete, i pokazat ću vam za sekundu kako to napraviti. Imam i lošu vijesti, koja glasi da sam imao video koji sam vam htio pokazati, no nažalost – zvuk ne radi u ovoj prostoriji, pa ću vam opisati, na pravi montipajtonovski način, što se događa u filmu. A u filmu, skupina istraživača idu u MIT na dan promocije. Odabrali smo MIT jer se, očito, nalazi vrlo daleko odavde i neće vam previše smetati, ali nekako slično djeluje i u Britaniji i na zapadnoj obali SAD, gdje smo postavili ista pitanja, a pitali smo diplomirane znanstvenike i oni nisu znali odgovoriti. I tako, strašno mnogo ljudi govori, "Jako bi me iznenadilo da mi kažete da to dolazi iz zraka. To me jako čudi." A to su oni koji su diplomirali znanost. A mi u video ubacimo: "Mi smo najjače znanstveno sveučilište na svijetu" zbog arogancije tipične za Britance. (Smijeh) A kad smo dali diplomiranim inženjerima ovo pitanje, rekli su da se to ne može. Kad smo im dali bateriju i komad žice i žarulju, i rekli, „Možete li to učiniti?“ nisu mogli. Dobro? A to nije ništa drukčije od Imperial Collegea u Londonu, usput, nije to nekakva protuamerička stvar.
As if. Now, the reason this matters is we pay lots and lots of money for teaching people -- we might as well get it right. And there are also some societal reasons why we might want people to understand what it is that's happening in photosynthesis. For example, one half of the carbon equation is how much we emit, and the other half of the carbon equation, as I'm very conscious as a trustee of Kew, is how much things soak up, and they soak up carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That's what plants actually do for a living. And, for any Finnish people in the audience, this is a Finnish pun: we are, both literally and metaphorically, skating on thin ice if we don't understand that kind of thing. Now, here's how you do the battery and the bulb. It's so easy, isn't it? Of course, you all knew that. But if you haven't played with a battery and a bulb, if you've only seen a circuit diagram, you might not be able to do that, and that's one of the problems.
Razlog zašto je ovo važno je taj da ako trošimo mnogo novca za obrazovanje ljudi, mogli bismo baš i znati odgovore. A postoje i društveni razlozi zašto bismo mogli željeti da ljudi razumiju što se događa u fotosintezi. Na primjer, jedna polovica jednadžbe ugljika se tiče toga koliko ispuštamo, a druga polovica jednadžbe, a vrlo sam svjestan toga, kao povjerenik za Kew, odnosi se na to koliko puno stvari upijaju, a one upijaju ugljični dioksid iz atmosfere. To je ono čime se biljke zapravo bave. A za sve Fince u publici, ovo je finska dosjetka, mi se, doslovno i metaforički, kližemo po tankom ledu ako ne razumijemo ovakve stvari. Sad, evo kako spojiti bateriju i žarulju. Tako je lako, zar ne? Naravno, svi ste to znali. Ali ako se niste igrali s baterijom i žaruljom, ako ste samo vidjeli električnu shemu, možda to ne biste znali napraviti, a to je jedan od problema.
So, why is it hotter in summer than in winter? We learn, as children, that you get closer to something that's hot, and it burns you. It's a very powerful bit of learning, and it happens pretty early on. By extension, we think to ourselves, "Why it's hotter in summer than in winter must be because we're closer to the Sun." I promise you that most of you will have got that. Oh, you're all shaking your heads, but only a few of you are shaking your heads very firmly. Other ones are kind of going like this. All right. It's hotter in summer than in winter because the rays from the Sun are spread out more, right, because of the tilt of the Earth. And if you think the tilt is tilting us closer, no, it isn't. The Sun is 93 million miles away, and we're tilting like this, right? It makes no odds. In fact, in the Northern Hemisphere, we're further from the Sun in summer, as it happens, but it makes no odds, the difference.
No, zašto je toplije ljeti nego zimi? Učimo, kao djeca, da kad se približite nečemu vrućem, to vas opeče. To je vrlo moćno saznanje, i usvajamo ga vrlo rano. Po tome razmišljamo, "Mora da je ljeti toplije nego zimi zato što se nalazimo bliže Suncu." Obećavam vam da bi većina vas to rekla. O, svi vi tresete glavom, ali samo nekolicina trese glavom vrlo odlučno, a ostali to čine nekako ovako. Dobro. Ljeti je toplije nego zimi zbog toga što se sunčeve zrake više šire, je li, zbog nagiba Zemlje. A ako mislite da nas nagib približava Suncu, ne, nije tako. Sunce je 149 milijuna kilometara daleko, a mi smo nagnuti ovako, dobro? Sasvim je jasno, zapravo, da smo na sjevernoj hemisferi udaljeniji od Sunca ljeti, kako ispada, ali razlika nije važna.
OK, now, the scribble of the diagram of the solar system. If you believe, as most of you probably do, that it's hotter in summer than in winter because we're closer to the Sun, you must have drawn an ellipse. Right? That would explain it, right? Except, in your -- you're nodding -- now, in your ellipse, have you thought, "Well, what happens during the night?" Between Australia and here, right, they've got summer and we've got winter, and what -- does the Earth kind of rush towards the Sun at night, and then rush back again? I mean, it's a very strange thing going on, and we hold these two models in our head, of what's right and what isn't right, and we do that, as human beings, in all sorts of fields.
OK, a sada, skica dijagrama sunčevog sustava. Ako vjerujete, kao što većina vas vjerojatno vjeruje, da je ljeti toplije nego zimi zato što smo bliže Suncu, morali ste nacrtati elipsu. Je li tako? To bi sve objasnilo, je li tako? Osim što, na vašoj – kimate glavom – na vašoj elipsi, je li vam palo na pamet pitanje, "No, a što se događa noću?" Između Australije i nas ovdje, kod njih je ljeto, a kod nas je zima, i što -- juri li Zemlja nekako prema Suncu noću, a zatim juri natrag? Mislim, to bi bilo vrlo čudno i mi u glavi držimo ta dva modela, o tome što je točno i što nije točno, i činimo to, kao ljudi, u najrazličitijim područjima.
So, here's Copernicus' view of what the solar system looked like as a plan. That's pretty much what you should have on your piece of paper. Right? And this is NASA's view. They're stunningly similar. I hope you notice the coincidence here. What would you do if you knew that people had this misconception, right, in their heads, of elliptical orbits caused by our experiences as children? What sort of diagram would you show them of the solar system, to show that it's not really like that? You'd show them something like this, wouldn't you? It's a plan, looking down from above. But, no, look what I found in the textbooks. That's what you show people, right? These are from textbooks, from websites, educational websites -- and almost anything you pick up is like that. And the reason it's like that is because it's dead boring to have a load of concentric circles, whereas that's much more exciting, to look at something at that angle, isn't it? Right? And by doing it at that angle, if you've got that misconception in your head, then that two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional thing will be ellipses. So you've -- it's crap, isn't it really? As we say. So, these mental models -- we look for evidence that reinforces our models. We do this, of course, with matters of race, and politics, and everything else, and we do it in science as well. So we look, just look -- and scientists do it, constantly -- we look for evidence that reinforces our models, and some folks are just all too able and willing to provide the evidence that reinforces the models.
Ovdje je Kopernikov prikaz izgleda sunčevog sustava u nacrtu, i to je više-manje ono što bi trebalo biti na vašem papiru. Je li? A ovo je prikaz NASA-e. Oni su zapanjujuće slični. Nadam se da ste ovdje primijetili podudarnost. Što biste da znate da ljudi u glavama drže tu pogrešnu predodžbu o eliptičnim orbitama zbog iskustva koje smo imali kao djeca? Kakav biste im dijagram sunčevog sustava predočili, da pokažete da ne izgleda stvarno tako? Pokazali biste im nešto poput ovoga, zar ne? To je nacrt, s pogledom odozgo prema dolje. Ali ne, pogledajte što sam našao u udžbenicima, to je ono što pokazujete ljudima, zar ne? Ovo je iz udžbenika, s Internet stranica, obrazovnih web stranica, i skoro sve što pronađete izgleda ovako. A razlog je u tome što je smrtno dosadno imati niz koncentričnih krugova, dok je puno uzbudljivije gledati nešto pod kutem, zar ne? Dobro? I kako su prikazi pod kutem, ako imate krivu predodžbu u glavi, tada dvodimenzionalni prikaz trodimenzionalne stvari mora biti elipsa. Pa ste – to je drek, zar nije, kako se već kaže? Kad imamo takve mentalne modele tražimo dokaze koji potvrđuju naše modele. Činimo isto, naravno, i kod rasnih pitanja, politike i svega drugoga, a činimo to i u znanosti. Pa tražimo – tražimo samo -- i znanstvenici to rade, stalno – tražimo dokaze koji učvršćuju naše modele, a neki ljudi su odviše sposobni i spremni pružiti dokaze koji potvrđuju modele.
So, being I'm in the United States, I'll have a dig at the Europeans. These are examples of what I would say is bad practice in science teaching centers. These pictures are from La Villette in France and the welcome wing of the Science Museum in London. And, if you look at the, kind of the way these things are constructed, there's a lot of mediation by glass, and it's very blue, and kind of professional -- in that way that, you know, Woody Allen comes up from under the sheets in that scene in "Annie Hall," and said, "God, that's so professional." And that you don't -- there's no passion in it, and it's not hands on, right, and, you know, pun intended. Whereas good interpretation -- I'll use an example from nearby -- is San Francisco Exploratorium, where all the things that -- the demonstrations, and so on, are made out of everyday objects that children can understand, it's very hands-on, and they can engage with, and experiment with. And I know that if the graduates at MIT and in the Imperial College in London had had the battery and the wire and the bit of stuff, and you know, been able to do it, they would have learned how it actually works, rather than thinking that they follow circuit diagrams and can't do it. So good interpretation is more about things that are bodged and stuffed and of my world, right? And things that -- where there isn't an extra barrier of a piece of glass or machined titanium, and it all looks fantastic, OK? And the Exploratorium does that really, really well. And it's amateur, but amateur in the best sense, in other words, the root of the word being of love and passion.
Budući da sam u Sjedinjenim Državama, rugat ću se Europljanima. Evo primjera onoga što bih nazvao lošom praksom u znanosti, u obrazovnim centrima. Ove slike su iz La Villette u Francuskoj, i iz prijamnog krila znanstvenog muzeja Science Museum u Londonu. Ako promotrite način na koji su ove stvari poslagane, sve je puno staklenih pregrada, sve je plavo i nekako profesionalno, znate, kao kad Woody Allen izroni ispod pokrivača u sceni s Annie Hall, i kaže: "Bože, to je tako profesionalno" i vi ne možete -- nema strasti u tome, stvar se nije držala u rukama, a ova dosjetka je namjerna, znate. S druge strane, dobra interpretacija bi bila, dat ću primjer iz blizine, iz Exploratoriuma u San Franciscu, gdje je sve – demonstracije, i tako dalje, načinjeno od svakodnevnih predmeta koje djeca mogu razumjeti, pristup je praktičan i ona se mogu uključiti i eksperimentirati. I znam: da su diplomcima na MIT-u i u Imperial Collegeu u Londonu bili dani baterija i žica, i još ponešto, da su to bili u prilici uraditi, naučili bi kako stvari zaista funkcioniraju, a ne bi mislili da prate električne sheme, a ne mogu to izvesti. Kod dobre interpretacije je više riječ o nečemu što je pomiješano, nakrcano, iz ovoga svijeta, zar ne? O stvarima – gdje nema dodatne pregrade komada stakla ili obrađenog titanija, i gdje sve ne izgleda fantastično, dobro? A Exploratorium to zaista dobro radi, on je amaterski, ali amaterski u najboljem smislu te riječi, drugim riječima, u korijenu te riječi su ljubav i strast.
So, children are not empty vessels, OK? So, as "Monty Python" would have it, this is a bit Lord Privy Seal to say so, but this is -- children are not empty vessels. They come with their own ideas and their own theories, and unless you work with those, then you won't be able to shift them, right? And I probably haven't shifted your ideas of how the world and universe operates, either. But this applies, equally, to matters of trying to sell new technology. For example, we are, in Britain, we're trying to do a digital switchover of the whole population into digital technology [for television]. And it's one of the difficult things is that when people have preconceptions of how it all works, it's quite difficult to shift those. So we're not empty vessels; the mental models that we have as children persist into adulthood. Poor teaching actually does more harm than good. In this country and in Britain, magnetism is understood better by children before they've been to school than afterwards, OK? Same for gravity, two concepts, so it's -- which is quite humbling, as a, you know, if you're a teacher, and you look before and after, that's quite worrying. They do worse in tests afterwards, after the teaching. And we collude. We design tests, or at least in Britain, so that people pass them. Right? And governments do very well. They pat themselves on the back. OK? We collude, and actually if you -- if someone had designed a test for me when I was doing my biology exams, to really understand, to see whether I'd understood more than just kind of putting starch and iodine together and seeing it go blue, and really understood that plants took their mass out of the air, then I might have done better at science. So the most important thing is to get people to articulate their models.
Dakle, djeca nisu prazne posude, OK? Kako bi to Monty Python rekao, malo je lordovski šuplje to reći, ali želim reći da djeca nisu prazne posude. Ona dolaze s vlastitim idejama i vlastitim teorijama, i ako ne radite s njima, nećete ih moći promijeniti, dobro? A vjerojatno ni ja nisam promijenio vaše ideje o funkcioniranju svijeta i svemira. No ovo se jednako odnosi i na pitanje kako prodati novu tehnologiju. Na primjer, mi – u Britaniji pokušavamo prebaciti cijelo stanovništvo na televizijsku digitalnu tehnologiju. A jedna od teškoća je u tome, kad ljudi imaju predrasude o tome kako to funkcionira, da je vrlo teško promijeniti ta uvjerenja. Dakle, nismo prazne posude i mentalni modeli koje steknemo kao djeca traju i kad smo odrasli. Loše podučavanje zapravo više šteti nego koristi. U ovoj zemlji, i u Britaniji, djeca bolje razumiju magnetizam prije škole nego nakon nje, OK? Isto je s gravitacijom, dva koncepta, pa je – što je ponižavajuće, znate, ako ste učitelj i pogledate rezultate prije i poslije, oni su zabrinjavajući. Djeca lošije rješavaju testove nakon podučavanja. A mi smišljamo, oblikujemo testove, barem u Britaniji, kako bi ih ljudi položili. Je li tako? I vladama dobro ide. Zadovoljne su sobom. OK? Mi smišljamo i kad biste vi -- kad bi netko osmislio test za mene dok sam polagao svoje ispite iz biologije, za razumijevanje – da provjeri jesam li razumio više od običnog miješanja škroba i joda i gledanja kako plavi, jesam li stvarno razumio da biljke svoju masu dobivaju iz zraka, tada bih možda bio bolji u znanosti. Najvažnija stvar je navesti ljude da objasne svoje modele.
Your homework is -- you know, how does an aircraft's wing create lift? An obvious question, and you'll have an answer now in your heads. And the second question to that then is, ensure you've explained how it is that planes can fly upside down. Ah ha, right. Second question is, why is the sea blue? All right? And you've all got an idea in your head of the answer. So, why is it blue on cloudy days? Ah, see. (Laughter) I've always wanted to say that in this country. (Laughter) Finally, my plea to you is to allow yourselves, and your children, and anyone you know, to kind of fiddle with stuff, because it's by fiddling with things that you, you know, you complement your other learning. It's not a replacement, it's just part of learning that's important. Thank you very much. Now -- oh, oh yeah, go on then, go on. (Applause)
Zadaća za vas je – znate, kako krila podižu zrakoplov? Očito pitanje i sada imate odgovor u glavi, ali onda je drugo pitanje u vezi toga, da obavezno objasnite kako to da zrakoplovi mogu letjeti naglavce. Aha, dobro. Drugo pitanje je zašto je more plavo? Dobro? I svi u glavi imate ideju rješenja. Dakle, zašto je plavo u oblačne dane? Aaa, vidite. (Smijeh) Oduvijek sam to htio reći u ovoj zemlji. (Smijeh) Konačno, moja molba vama je da dopustite sebi, svojoj djeci i svakome koga znate da se malo igra sa stvarima, jer poigravanje sa stvarima, dopunjava vaše učenje. Ono nije zamjena, već dio učenja koji je važan. Hvala vam lijepa. O, o, da, hajde onda, hajde. (Pljesak)