I can't think of any more human activity
than conducting science experiments.
That's what we do as human beings.
and we do that more thoroughly and better than any other species on earth
that we have yet encountered.
We explore our environment more than we are compelled to utter poetry when we're toddlers
We start doing that later.
Before that happens every child is a scientist.
Think about it! What the kids do?
Young kids, kids they can barely walk, what are they doing?
They are exploring their environment through experimentation.
I don't care about your economic background, I don't care what town you born in, what city, what country,
if you are a child you are curious about your environment,
you are overturning rocks
you are plucking leaves off a trees, and petals off a flowers, and looking inside,
and you are doing things create disorder in the lives of the adults around you.
And so then, what the adults do?
They say, "Don't pluck the petals of the flowers. I just spent money on that.
Don't play with the egg. It might break. Don't …" Everything is a don't.
I'm often asked by parents
what advice can I give them to help get kids interested in science?
And I have only one bit of advice.
Get out of their way! Kids are born curious. Period.
We spend the first year teaching them to walk and talk
and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.
So... you get out of their way.
And you know what you do? You put things in their midst that help them explore. Help 'em explore.
Why don't you get a pair of binoculars, just leave it there one day?
Watch 'em pick it up. And watch 'em look around. They'll do all kind of things with it.
For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon,
and the moon wasn't just bigger, it was better.
There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive.
I was transformed by picking up a pair of binoculars and looking up.
And so when i think of science I think of a truly human activity.
Something fundamental to our DNA.
Something that drives curiosity.
They go together. The act of being curious and the act of wanting to do the experiment.
When you conduct science it is the natural world that is the ultimate decider of what is true and what is not.
You have to create what it is that you do best
that layers onto the formal training that may be behind it.
I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society,
were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.
It's the great tragedy - People employed in ways that don't fully tap everything they do best in life.
And so... I think the greatest of people in society carved niches
that represented the unique expression of their combinations of talents,
and if everyone had the luxury of expressing the unique combinations of talents in this world,
our society would be transformed over night.