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I can't think of any more human activity

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than conducting science experiments.

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That's what we do as human beings.

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and we do that more thoroughly and better than any other species on earth

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that we have yet encountered.

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We explore our environment more than we are compelled to utter poetry when we're toddlers

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We start doing that later.

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Before that happens every child is a scientist.

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Think about it! What the kids do?

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Young kids, kids they can barely walk, what are they doing?

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They are exploring their environment through experimentation.

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I don't care about your economic background, I don't care what town you born in, what city, what country,

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if you are a child you are curious about your environment,

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you are overturning rocks

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you are plucking leaves off a trees, and petals off a flowers, and looking inside,

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and you are doing things create disorder in the lives of the adults around you.

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And so then, what the adults do?

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They say, "Don't pluck the petals of the flowers. I just spent money on that. 


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Don't play with the egg. It might break. Don't …" Everything is a don't. 


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I'm often asked by parents 


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what advice can I give them to help get kids interested in science? 


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And I have only one bit of advice. 


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Get out of their way! Kids are born curious. Period. 


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We spend the first year teaching them to walk and talk 


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and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down. 


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So... you get out of their way. 


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And you know what you do? You put things in their midst that help them explore. Help 'em explore.

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Why don't you get a pair of binoculars, just leave it there one day? 


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Watch 'em pick it up. And watch 'em look around. They'll do all kind of things with it.


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For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon, 


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and the moon wasn't just bigger, it was better. 


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There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive. 


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I was transformed by picking up a pair of binoculars and looking up. 


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And so when i think of science I think of a truly human activity. 


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Something fundamental to our DNA. 


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Something that drives curiosity. 


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They go together. The act of being curious and the act of wanting to do the experiment. 


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When you conduct science it is the natural world that is the ultimate decider of what is true and what is not. 


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You have to create what it is that you do best 


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that layers onto the formal training that may be behind it. 


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I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, 


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were never versions of someone else. They were themselves. 


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It's the great tragedy - People employed in ways that don't fully tap everything they do best in life.


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And so... I think the greatest of people in society carved niches 


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that represented the unique expression of their combinations of talents, 


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and if everyone had the luxury of expressing the unique combinations of talents in this world, 


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our society would be transformed over night.