WEBVTT

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For the past few years,

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I've been spending my summers
in the marine biological laboratory

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in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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And there, what I've been doing
is essentially renting a boat.

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What I would like to do is ask you

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to come on a boat ride with me tonight.

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So, we ride off from Eel Pond
into Vineyard Sound,

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right off the coast of Martha's Vineyard,

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equipped with a drone
to identify potential spots

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from which to peer into the Atlantic.

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Earlier, I was going to say
into the depths of the Atlantic,

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but we don't have to go too deep
to reach the unknown.

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Here, barely two miles away

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from what is arguably the greatest
marine biology lab in the world,

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we lower a simple
plankton net into the water

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and bring up to the surface

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things that humanity rarely
pays any attention to,

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and oftentimes has never seen before.

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Here's one of the organisms
that we caught in our net.

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This is a jellyfish.

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But look closely,

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and living inside of this animal
is another organism

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that is very likely
entirely new to science.

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A complete new species.

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Or how about this other transparent beauty

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with a beating heart,

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asexually growing on top of its head,

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progeny that will move on
to reproduce sexually.

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Let me say that again:

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this animal is growing asexually
on top of its head,

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progeny that is going to reproduce
sexually in the next generation.

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A weird jellyfish?

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Not quite.

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This is an ascidian.

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This is a group of animals

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that now we know we share
extensive genomic ancestry with,

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and it is perhaps the closest
invertebrate species to our own.

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Meet your cousin,

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Thalia democratica.

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(Laughter)

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I'm pretty sure you didn't save a spot
at your last family reunion

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for Thalia,

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but let me tell you,

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these animals are profoundly related to us

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in ways that we're just
beginning to understand.

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So, next time you hear anybody
derisively telling you

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that this type of research
is a simple fishing expedition,

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I hope that you'll remember
the trip that we just took.

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Today, many of the biological
sciences only see value

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in studying deeper what we already know --

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in mapping already-discovered continents.

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But some of us are much more
interested in the unknown.

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We want to discover
completely new continents,

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and gaze at magnificent
vistas of ignorance.

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We crave the experience
of being completely baffled

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by something we've never seen before.

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And yes, I agree

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there's a lot of little ego satisfaction
in being able to say,

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"Hey, I was the first one
to discover that."

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But this is not
a self-aggrandizing enterprise,

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because in this type
of discovery research,

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if you don't feel like a complete
idiot most of the time,

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you're just not sciencing hard enough.

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(Laughter)

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So every summer I bring onto the deck
of this little boat of ours

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more and more things
that we know very little about.

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I would like tonight
to tell you a story about life

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that rarely gets told
in an environment like this.

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From the vantage point of our 21st-century
biological laboratories,

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we have begun to illuminate
many mysteries of life with knowledge.

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We sense that after centuries
of scientific research,

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we're beginning to make
significant inroads

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into understanding some of the most
fundamental principles of life.

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Our collective optimism is reflected
by the growth of biotechnology

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across the globe,

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striving to utilize scientific knowledge
to cure human diseases.

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Things like cancer, aging,
degenerative diseases;

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these are but some
of the undesirables we wish to tame.

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I often wonder:

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Why is it that we are having
so much trouble

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trying to solve the problem of cancer?

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Is it that we're trying to solve
the problem of cancer,

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and not trying to understand life?

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Life on this planet
shares a common origin,

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and I can summarize 3.5 billion years
of the history of life on this planet

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in a single slide.

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What you see here are representatives
of all known species in our planet.

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In this immensity of life
and biodiversity,

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we occupy a rather unremarkable position.

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(Laughter)

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Homo sapiens.

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The last of our kind.

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And though I don't really want
to disparage at all

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the accomplishments of our species,

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as much as we wish it to be so
and often pretend that it is,

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we are not the measure of all things.

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We are, however, the measurers
of many things.

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We relentlessly quantify,
analyze and compare,

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and some of this is absolutely invaluable
and indeed necessary.

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But this emphasis today on forcing
biological research to specialize

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and to produce practical outcomes

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is actually restricting our ability
to interrogate life

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to unacceptably narrow confines
and unsatisfying depths.

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We are measuring an astonishingly
narrow sliver of life,

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and hoping that those numbers
will save all of our lives.

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How narrow do you ask?

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Well, let me give you a number.

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration recently estimated

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that about 95 percent of our oceans
remain unexplored.

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Now let that sink in for a second.

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95 percent of our oceans
remain unexplored.

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I think it's very safe to say

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that we don't even know
how much about life we do not know.

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So, it's not surprising
that every week in my field

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we begin to see the addition
of more and more new species

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to this amazing tree of life.

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This one for example --

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discovered earlier this summer,

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new to science,

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and now occupying its lonely branch
in our family tree.

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What is even more tragic

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is that we know about a bunch
of other species of animals out there,

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but their biology remains
sorely under-studied.

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I'm sure some of you
have heard about the fact

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that a starfish can actually
regenerate its arm after it's lost.

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But some of you might not know

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that the arm itself can actually
regenerate a complete starfish.

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And there are animals out there
that do truly astounding things.

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I'm almost willing to bet

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that many of you have never heard
of the flatworm, Schmidtea mediterranea.

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This little guy right here

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does things that essentially
just blow my mind.

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You can grab one of these animals
and cut it into 18 different fragments,

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and each and every one of those fragments
will go on to regenerate

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a complete animal

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in under two weeks.

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18 heads, 18 bodies, 18 mysteries.

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For the past decade and a half or so,

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I've been trying to figure out
how these little dudes do what they do,

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and how they pull this magic trick off.

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But like all good magicians,

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they're not really releasing
their secrets readily to me.

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(Laughter)

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So here we are,

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after 20 years of essentially
studying these animals,

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genome mapping, chin scratching,

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and thousands of amputations
and thousands of regenerations,

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we still don't fully understand
how these animals do what they do.

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Each planarian an ocean unto itself,

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full of unknowns.

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One of the common characteristics

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of all of these animals
I've been talking to you about

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is that they did not appear
to have received the memo

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that they need to behave
according to the rules

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that we have derived from a handful
of randomly selected animals

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that currently populate the vast majority

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of biomedical laboratories
across the world.

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Meet our Nobel Prize winners.

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Seven species, essentially,

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that have produced for us the brunt
of our understanding

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of biological behavior today.

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This little guy right here --

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three Nobel Prizes in 12 years.

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And yet, after all the attention
they have garnered,

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and all the knowledge they have generated,

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as well as the lion's share
of the funding,

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here we are standing [before] the same
litany of intractable problems

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and many new challenges.

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And that's because, unfortunately,

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these seven animals essentially correspond

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to 0.0009 percent of all of the species
that inhabit the planet.

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So I'm beginning to suspect

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that our specialization is beginning
to impede our progress at best,

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and at worst, is leading us astray.

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That's because life
on this planet and its history

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is the history of rule breakers.

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Life started on the face of this planet
as single-cell organisms,

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swimming for millions
of years in the ocean,

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until one of those creatures decided,

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"I'm going to do things differently today;

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today I would like to invent
something called multicellularity,

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and I'm going to do this."

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And I'm sure it wasn't a popular
decision at the time --

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(Laughter)

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but somehow, it managed to do it.

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And then, multicellular
organisms began to populate

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all these ancestral oceans,

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and they thrived.

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And we have them here today.

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Land masses began to emerge
from the surface of the oceans,

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and another creature thought,

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"Hey, that looks like a really nice
piece of real estate.

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I'd like to move there."

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"Are you crazy?

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You're going to desiccate out there.
Nothing can live out of water."

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But life found a way,

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and there are organisms
now that live on land.

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Once on land, they may have
looked up into the sky

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and said, "It would be nice
to go to the clouds,

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I'm going to fly."

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"You can't break the law of gravity,
there's no way you can fly."

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And yet, nature has invented --

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multiple and independent times --

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ways to fly.

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I love to study these animals
that break the rules,

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because every time they break a rule,
they invent something new

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that made it possible for us
to be able to be here today.

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These animals did not get the memo.

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They break the rules.

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So if we're going to study animals
that break the rules,

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shouldn't how we study them
also break the rules?

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I think we need to renew
our spirit of exploration.

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Rather than bring nature
into our laboratories

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and interrogate it there,

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we need to bring our science

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into the majestic laboratory
that is nature,

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and there, with our modern
technological armamentarium,

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interrogate every new form
of life we find,

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and any new biological attribute
that we may find.

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We actually need to bring
all of our intelligence

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to becoming stupid again --

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clueless [before] the immensity
of the unknown.

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Because after all,

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science is not really about knowledge.

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Science is about ignorance.

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That's what we do.

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Once, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote,

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"If you want to build a ship,

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don't drum up people to collect wood

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and don't assign them tasks and work,

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but rather teach them to long
for the endless immensity of the sea ..."

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As a scientist and a teacher,

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I like to paraphrase this to read

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that we scientists need
to teach our students

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to long for the endless
immensity of the sea

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that is our ignorance.

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We Homo sapiens are the only
species we know of

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that is driven to scientific inquiry.

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We, like all other species on this planet,

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are inextricably woven
into the history of life on this planet.

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And I think I'm a little wrong
when I say that life is a mystery,

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because I think that life
is actually an open secret

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that has been beckoning our species
for millennia to understand it.

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So I ask you:

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Aren't we the best chance
that life has to know itself?

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And if so,

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what the heck are we waiting for?

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Thank you.

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(Applause)