< Return to Video

Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC

  • Not Synced
    I've been spending my summers
  • Not Synced
    in the Marine Biological Laboratory in
    Woods Hole, Massachusetts
  • Not Synced
    And there, what I've been doing is
    essentially renting a boat.
  • Not Synced
    What I would like to ask you to do
  • Not Synced
    is to come on a boat ride with me tonight.
  • Not Synced
    So, we ride off from Eel Pond into
    the Vineyard South,
  • Not Synced
    right off the coast of Martha's Vineyard,
  • Not Synced
    equipped with a drone to
    identify potential spots
  • Not Synced
    from which to peer into the Atlantic.
  • Not Synced
    Earlier I was going to say
  • Not Synced
    into the depths of the Atlantic,
  • Not Synced
    but we don't have to go too deep
    to reach the unknown.
  • Not Synced
    Here, barely two miles away,
  • Not Synced
    from what is arguably the greatest
    marine biology lab in the world,
  • Not Synced
    we lower a simple plankton net
    into the water
  • Not Synced
    and bring up into the surface things
    that humanity rarely pays attention to
  • Not Synced
    and oftentimes, have never seen before.
  • Not Synced
    Here is one of the organisms
    that we caught in our net,
  • Not Synced
    this is a jellyfish.
  • Not Synced
    But look closely, living inside this
    animal is another organism
  • Not Synced
    that is very likely entirely
    new to science.
  • Not Synced
    A complete new species.
  • Not Synced
    Or how about this other
    transparent beauty?
  • Not Synced
    With a beating heart,
    asexually growing,
  • Not Synced
    on top of its head,
  • Not Synced
    progeny that will move on to
    reproduce sexually.
  • Not Synced
    Now let me say that again,
  • Not Synced
    this animal is growing asexually,
  • Not Synced
    on top of its head,
  • Not Synced
    progeny that is going to reproduce
    sexually in the next generation.
  • Not Synced
    A weird jellyfish, not quite,
  • Not Synced
    this is an ascidian,
    this is a group of animals
  • Not Synced
    that now we know we share
    extensive genomic ancestry with,
  • Not Synced
    and it is perhaps the closest
    invertebrate species to our own.
  • Not Synced
    Meet your cousin,
    Thalia democratica
  • Not Synced
    I'm pretty sure you didn't
    save a spot
  • Not Synced
    in your last family reunion for Thalia.
  • Not Synced
    But, let me tell you,
  • Not Synced
    these animals are profoundly related to us
  • Not Synced
    in ways we are just
    beginning to understand.
  • Not Synced
    Next time you hear anybody
    derisively telling you
  • Not Synced
    that this type of research is a
    simple fishing expedition,
  • Not Synced
    I hope that you remember
    the trip that we just took.
  • Not Synced
    Today, many biological sciences
    only see value
  • Not Synced
    in studying deeper what we
    already know,
  • Not Synced
    In mapping already discovered continents.
  • Not Synced
    But some of us are much more
    interested in the unknown,
  • Not Synced
    we want to discover completely
    new continents,
  • Not Synced
    and gaze at magnificent vistas
    of ignorance.
  • Not Synced
    We crave the experience of being
    completely baffled
  • Not Synced
    by something we have
    never seen before.
  • Not Synced
    And yes, I agree that there's a lot of
    ego satisfaction in being able to say
  • Not Synced
    "Hey, I was the first one
    to discover that."
  • Not Synced
    This is not a self-aggrandizing
    enterprise
  • Not Synced
    because in this type of
    discovery research,
  • Not Synced
    if you don't feel like a complete
    idiot most of the time,
  • Not Synced
    you're just not science-ing
    hard enough.
  • Not Synced
    (Laughter)
  • Not Synced
    Every summer, I bring onto the deck
    of this little boat of ours,
  • Not Synced
    more and more things that
    we know very little about.
  • Not Synced
    Very, very, very little about.
  • Not Synced
    I would like to tell you tonight,
  • Not Synced
    a story about life that
    rarely gets told
  • Not Synced
    in an environment like this.
  • Not Synced
    From the vantage point of
    our 21st biological laboratories,
  • Not Synced
    our 21st century
    biological laboratories,
  • Not Synced
    we have began to illuminate
  • Not Synced
    many mysteries of life with knowledge.
  • Not Synced
    We sensed that after centuries
    of scientific research,
  • Not Synced
    we're beginning to make significant
    inroads into understanding
  • Not Synced
    some of the most fundamental
    principles of life.
  • Not Synced
    Our collective optimism is reflected
  • Not Synced
    by the growth of biotechnology
    across the globe.
  • Not Synced
    Striving to utilize scientific knowledge
    to cure human diseases,
  • Not Synced
    things like cancer, aging,
    degeneretive diseases,
  • Not Synced
    these are but some of the
    undesirables we wish to tame.
  • Not Synced
    What I often wonder is,
  • Not Synced
    "Why is it that we are
    having so much trouble
  • Not Synced
    trying to solve the
    problem of cancer?
  • Not Synced
    Is it that we're trying to solve
    the problem of cancer,
  • Not Synced
    and not trying to
    understand life?"
  • Not Synced
    Life on this planet
    shares a common origin.
  • Not Synced
    I can summarize 3.5 billion years
    of the history of life on this planet
  • Not Synced
    in a single slide.
  • Not Synced
    What you see represented here
  • Not Synced
    are all known species,
  • Not Synced
    representative of all
    known species of our planet.
  • Not Synced
    in this immensity of life
    and biodiversity
  • Not Synced
    we occupy a rather
    unremarkable position.
  • Not Synced
    Homo sapiens,
    the last of our kind.
  • Not Synced
    And though I don't really
    want to disparage
  • Not Synced
    all the accomplishments
    of our species,
  • Not Synced
    as much as we wish it to be so,
  • Not Synced
    and often pretend that it is so,
  • Not Synced
    we are not the measure of all things.
  • Not Synced
    We are, however, the measurers
    of many things.
  • Not Synced
    We relentlessly quantify,
    analyze and compare,
  • Not Synced
    and some of these are absolutely
    invaluable and indeed necessary,
  • Not Synced
    but this emphasis today,
  • Not Synced
    on forcing biological research
    to specialize,
  • Not Synced
    and to produce practical outcomes,
  • Not Synced
    is actually restricting our ability
    to interrogate life,
  • Not Synced
    to accept only narrow confines
    and unsatisfying depths.
  • Not Synced
    We are measuring an astonishingly
    narrow sliver of life,
  • Not Synced
    and hoping that those numbers
    will save all of our lives.
Title:
Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
14:52

English subtitles

Revisions Compare revisions