ALBERT SZENT-GYORGYI ( b.
sept 16, 18
Teaching and the Expanding Knowledge
December 4, 1964
Another
Nobel Prize winner offers some insight about the nature of science.
He
talks of generalizations, the role of books, learning in schools, and humanism
in relation to science.
Like
Richard Feynman, Gyorgi suggests an active kind of role for the scientist who
is trying to make more sense out of nature.
If
you were able to read The Double Helix
before encountering this article you will probably have a better feeling for
some of the ideas.
In
any case, the perceptions of this man should raise some questions or suggest
alternatives that will help to stimulate further considerations about science.
The simplification that comes with expanding knowledge enables teaching
to encompass this knowledge.
Our attempt to harmonize
teaching with expanding-or rather exploding-knowledge would be hopeless should
growth not entail simplification. I will dwell on this sunny side.
Knowledge is a sacred cow and my problem
will be how we can milk her while keeping clear of her horns.
One of my reasons for being
optimistic is that the foundations of nature are simple. This was brought home
to me many years ago when I joined the Institute for Advanced Studies in
Princeton. I did this in the hope that by rubbing elbows with those great
atomic physicists and mathematicians I would learn something about living
matters.
Leyden note:
he's saying --- hang around smart people
But
as soon as I revealed that in any living system there are more than two
electrons, the physicists would not speak to me. With all their computers they
could not say what the third electron might do.
The
remarkable thing is that it knows exactly what to do.
So
that little electron knows something that all the wise men of Princeton don't,
and this can only be something very simple. Nature, basically, must be much
simpler than she looks to us.
She
looks to us like a coded letter for which we have no code.
To
the degree to which our methods become less clumsy and more adequate and we
find out nature's code, things must become not only clearer, but very much
simpler, too.
Science tends to generalize, and generalization means simplification.
My own science, biology, is today not only very much
richer than it was in my student days, but is simpler, too.
Then it was horribly
complex, being fragmented into a great number of isolated principles.
Today these are all fused into one single complex with the atomic model
in its center.
Cosmology, quantum
mechanics, DNA and genetics, are all, more or less, parts of one and the same story-a most wonderful simplification.
And generalizations are also
more satisfying to the mind than details.
We, in our teaching, should place more emphasis on generalizations than
on details.
Of course, details and
generalizations must be in a proper balance: generalization can be reached only
from details, while it is the generalization which gives value and interest to
the detail.
After this preamble I would
like to make a few general remarks,
first, about the main instrument of teaching; books.
There is a widely spread
misconception about the nature of books which contain knowledge.
It is thought that such
books are something the contents of which have to be crammed into our heads.
I think the opposite is
closer to the truth.
Books are there to keep the knowledge in while we use our
heads for something better.
Books may also be a better
place for such knowledge. In my own head any book-knowledge has a half-life of
a few weeks.
So I leave knowledge, for safe-keeping, to books and
libraries and go fishing, sometimes for fish, sometimes for new knowledge.
I know that I am shockingly ignorant.
I could take exams in
college but could not pass any of them.
Worse than that: I treasure my ignorance; I feel snug in it.
It does not cloud my
naivetŽ', my simplicity of mind, my ability to marvel childishly at nature and
recognize a miracle even if I see it every day.
If, with my 71 years, I am still digging on the
fringes of knowledge,
I owe it to this childish
attitude, "Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God," says the Bible.
"For they can understand Nature," say I.
I do not want to be
misunderstood ---I do not depreciate
knowledge, a
nd I have worked long and
hard to know something of all fields of science related to biology.
Without this I could do no
research.
But I have retained only
what I need for an understanding, an intuitive grasp, and in order to know in
which book to find what.
This was fun, and we must have fun, or else our work is no good.
My next remark is about time relations.
The time spent in school is relatively short compared to the time
thereafter.
Leyden note:
doesn't leyden always talk about 21,915 days ?
I
am stressing this because it is widely thought that everything we have to know
to do our job well we have to learn in school.
This
is wrong because, during the long time which follows school, we are apt to
forget, anyway, what we have learned there, while we have ample time for study.
In fact, most of us have to learn all our lives, and it was with gray hair that
I took up the study of quantum mechanics, myself.
So what the school has to
do, in the first place, is to make us learn how to learn, to whet our appetites
for knowledge, to teach us the delight of doing a job well and the excitement
of creativity, to teach us to love what we do, and to help us to find what we
love to do.
My friend Gerard quoted
Fouchet as
advising us to take from the altar of knowledge the fire, not the ashes.
Being of more earthly
disposition, I would advise you to take the meat, not the bones.
Teachers, on the whole, have a remarkable preference for bones,
especially dry ones.
Of course, bones are
important, and now and then we all like to suck a bit on them, but only after
having eaten the meat.
What I mean to say is that we must not learn things, we must
live things.
This is true for almost
everything. Shakespeare and all of literature must be lived, music, paintings,
and sculptures have to be made, drama has to be acted. This is even true for
history: we should live through it, through the spirit of the various periods,
instead of storing their data. I am glad to say that this trend-to live
things-is becoming evident even in the teaching of science.
The most recent trend is not
to teach the simpler laws of nature, but to make our students discover them for
themselves in simple experiments. Of course, I know data are important.
They may be even
interesting, but only after we have consumed the meat, the substance.
After this we may even
become curious about them and retain them.
But taught before this they
are just dull, and they dull, if not kill, the spirit.
It is a widely spread
opinion that memorizing will not hurt, that knowledge does no harm.
I am afraid it may.
Dead knowledge dulls the
spirit, fills the stomach without nourishing the body.
The mind is not a bottomless
pit, and if we put in one thing we might have to leave out another.
By a more live teaching we
can fill the soul and reserve the mind for the really important things.
We may even spare time we
need for expanding subjects.
Such live teaching, which
fills both the soul and the mind, may help man to meet one of his most
formidable problems -- what to do with himself.
The most advanced societies,
like ours, can already produce more than they can consume, and with advancing
automation the discrepancy is increasing rapidly.
We try to meet the challenge
by producing useless things, like armaments.
But this is no final answer.
In the end we will have to work less.
But then, what will we do
with ourselves ?
Lives cannot be left empty.
Man needs excitement and
challenge, and in an affluent society everything is within easy reach.
And boredom is dangerous, for it can easily make a society seek excitement in
political adventure and in brinkmanship, following irresponsible and ignorant
leaders.
Our own society has recently
shown alarming signs of this trend. In a world where atomic bombs can fly from
one end to the other in seconds, this is tantamount to suicide.
By teaching live arts and
science, the schools could open up the endless horizons and challenges of
intellectual and artistic life and make whole life an exciting adventure.
I believe that in our
teaching not only must details and generalizations be in balance, hut our whole
teaching must be balanced with general human values.
I want to conclude
with a few remarks on single subjects, first, science.
Science has two aspects: it
has to be part of any education, of humanistic culture.
But we also have to teach
science as preparation for jobs. If we distinguish sharply between these two
aspects then the talk about the "two cultures" will lose its meaning.
A last remark I want to make
is about the teaching of history, not only because it is the most important
subject, but also because I still have in my nostrils the acid smell of my own
sweat which I produced when learning its data.
History has two chapters:
National History and World History. National history is a kind of family affair
and I will not speak about it.
But what is world history ?
In its essence it is the
story of man, how he rose from his animal status to his present elevation.
This is a fascinating story
and is linked to a limited number of creative men, its heroes, who created new
knowledge, new moral or ethical values, or new beauty.
Opposing this positive side
of history there is a negative, destructive side linked to the names of kings,
barons generals, and dictators who, with their greed and lust for power, made
wars, fought battles, and mostly created misery, destroying what other men had
built.
These are the heroes of the
history we teach at present as world history.
Not only is this history negative and lopsided, it is false, too, for
it omits the lice, rats, malnutrition, and epidemics which had more to do with
the course of things than generals and kings, as Zinsser ably pointed out.
The world history we teach
should also be more truthful and include the stench, dirt, callousness, and
misery of past ages, to teach us to appreciate progress and what we have.
We need not falsify history;
history has a tendency to falsify itself, because only the living return from
the battlefield to tell stories.
If the dead could return by
once and tell about their ignominious end, history and politics would be
different today. A truer history would also be simpler.
As the barriers between the
various sciences have disappeared, so the barriers between science and
humanities may gradually melt away.
Dating through physical
methods has become a method of research in history, while x-ray spectra and
microanalysis have become tools in the study of painting.
I hope that the achievements
of human psychology may help us, also, to re-write human history in a more
unified and translucent form.
The story of man's progress
is not linked to any period, nation, creed, or color, and could teach to our
youngsters a wider human solidarity.
This they will badly need
when rebuilding political and human relations, making them compatible with
survival.
In spite of its many
chapters, our teaching has, essentially, but one object, the production of men
who can fill their shoes and stand erect with their eyes on the wider horizons.
This makes the school, on any level, into the most important public
institution and the teacher into the most important
public figure.
As we teach today,
so the morrow will be.
1.
Gyorgyi stated that "books are there to keep the knowledge in while we use
our heads for something better."
Does
this have any implications for science textbooks in elementary school science?
Secondary
school ? College ?
2. Do you note any
similarities or differences in the thinking of Feynman and Gyorgyi as to the nature of science ?
3. "This was fun, and
we must have fun, or else our work is no good."
Could a scientist's work be
fun ?
4. Can we learn things
without living them ?
Reprinted from Science, Vol. 146, December 4, 1964, pp. 1278-1279, by permission of the edited and the author.
Dr. Gyorgyi received the Nobel Prize for physiology and Medicine in 1937 and is
one of the best known biochemists in the world. =======
reprinted in Science-Children -- readings in elementary science education
ronald g. good, editor ---- wm. c. brown 1972