Download Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist AudioBook Free
Even in the 21st century, the popular image of a scientist is a reclusive genius in a lab coat, blending formulas or training equations inaccessible to all but the initiated few. The theory that researchers are somehow smarter than ordinary people is a common yet dangerous misunderstanding, getting us off the hook for being unsure of or caring the way the world works. How does technology become so divorced from our daily experience? Is scientific understanding up to now out of reach for the nonscientists among us? As technology popularizer Chad Orzel argues in Eureka, even the individuals who are most forthright about hating technology are doing technology, often without even knowing it. Orzel implies that technology isn't something alien and inscrutable, beyond the functions of regular people; it's central to the real human experience. Every human being can think like a scientist and regularly does so in the course of everyday activities. The disconnect between this simple fact & most people's perceptions is mostly due to the common misunderstanding that technology is a body of (boring, abstract, often numerical) facts. In truth science is most beneficial thought of as a process: Looking at the world, considering what makes it work, evaluating your mental model by assessing it to simple fact, and sharing with others about your results. The facts that people too often think of as the whole of science are simply just the products of this scientific process. Eureka implies that this technique is one we all regularly use and something that everyone can do. By disclosing the connection between the everyday activities people do - solving crossword puzzles, playing athletics, or even enjoying unknown shows on television set - and the operations used to make great scientific discoveries, Orzel implies that if we discover the process to do technology as something familiar, we are better able to appreciate scientific discoveries and use scientific facts and considering to help solve the issues that affect people.
