[applause]
Dawkins: well I suppose I must bear some responsibility for the fact that
we don't have a chairman sitting between us. I'm trying to
pioneer a new method of public
conversation in which we have a chairman to introduce us,
a chairman to stop us promptly when we we've gone too far -
and I hope Mark will do that.
But, not a chairman to actually moderate the discussion
itself because I'm sure this wouldn't have happened with Mark K.
but in my experience having a chairman on the stage between two, uh,
conversationalists spoils the conversation
because, just when it's getting going the chairman will
change the subject. Even worse when there are, say, four people on the on the panel
and there's a good conversation going between person A and person B,
and just when person B's about to retort to
person A, the chairman will jump in and say to person C,
'And what do you think about this'? And that completely derails the,
the entire thing. Another thing that is even worse is the debate format:
20 minutes for the proposition, 20 minutes for the opposition,
five minutes rebuttal, five minutes rebuttal. Its all derived from lawyers.
[audience laughter]
Like so much else.
So that's just my introduction to the
format, in a way. Apology, it throws an onus upon
us to keep the conversation going and so
we are going to do our best. Lawrence.
Krauss: Well, the other thing we wanted to let you know, as Mark
alluded, we've already had a rather public dialogue
that appeared in Scientific American, and actually an extended version is online
and I encourage you to look at that, but we also therefore decided
that we would not try and reproduce that dialogue here because it's accessible to you
so we've, uh, assured that would be the case by making
absolutely no preparations whatsoever for this, uh,
[audience laughter]
for this event, and that may or may not be obvious, we'll see.
I'm gonna begin by
asking you, Richard, about up your own philosophy about education.
What drives your interest in public education and the techniques you use?
Dawkins: My job is Charles Simonyi Professor of
the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford,
and the benefactor, Charles Simonyi,
explicitly wanted me to promote
science to the general public rather than, for example, do research
on how many people think the sun goes around the Earth
or how many people don't know why we have a Winter and a Summer.
Now, that's very interesting research, and you'd be shocked by the results. [audience laughter]
Krauss: Absolutely in fact you should know that
50 percent the American public - every year the National Science Foundation has
has asked this question -
do not get the answer right to the question 'the Earth goes around the Sun
and takes a year to do it: true or false?'
and as I like to say we know who that 50 percent vote for but any in case...
[laughter] [clapping]
Dawkins: There's a similar 50 percent who think that the world is six thousand years old.
And as I've said before
if you actually work out the scale of the era its equivalent to believing
that the distance from New York to San Francisco is 7.8 yards.
[audience laughter]
Anyway and as I was saying
the Charles Simonyi Professor for The Public Understanding of Science
could devote himself or herself to
- I say himself or herself. I'm retiring this year, and so
my job is being advertised and I'm
looking forward to see who gets it. Um, it could have been
devoted to that, or it could have been devoted to say, teaching
how to communicate science. But, the benefactor
asked me to do it by promoting science.
My...
I think there are two main ways of thinking about
science as an educationist
and I can illustrate it by talking about two approaches to
space. There is the Carl Sagan approach to space
which is, this sort of, 'isn't it wonderful?'
- and that's my approach - and then there is what I call the non-stick frying pan approach
which, is 'oh, we must support NASA because,
non-stick frying pans were developed as a byproduct of...
[laughter]
and that's an extreme but nevertheless
when I'm asked to justify science education, I do not,
as some people do, leap first for the 'oh, it's useful...'
For example 'why preserve the Amazon rainforest?'
...'because, we might be able to get drugs from the bark of trees'. Maybe we can but
that's not why I want to preserve the other Amazon rainforest.
So, I'm the 'Carl Sagan', 'the wonder of space',
'the beauty of the universe',
the 'awe inspiring nature' of
deep space, deep time, deep complexity, in Biology.
I don't go for exploding custard
'wiz bangs', and things like that.
Krauss: Well, okay that's a really good point you point out, because, my area of research
is in something that - in
all fairness - has absolutely no practical utility whatsoever.
And, the thing is I'm often asked to apologize for that, and
it is interesting to me that people ask, you know, 'what's the point in doing that
if it's not useful?' - but they never ask that, or very rarely do they ask that
about art or literature or music.
Those things are not going to produce a better toaster.
And for me, I have to agree with you completely that
the most fascinating thing about science is the ideas,
the lifting the human spirit.
And we remember the Greeks not for their plumbing, or the Romans, not particularly
for their plumbing,
but, largely, for their ideas. And why we have to justify that
when we talk about science amazes me.
And there's a quote that I like to use from
the first head of the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which is a particle accelerator.
Right now in fact it's the most energetic particle accelerator in the world,
soon to be surpassed by a machine in Geneva - as with maybe
many things about this country.
He was asked to testify before Congress.
They asked him, 'would this aid in the defense to the nation?', a typical thing,
and he said 'no, but it'll help keep the nation worth defending' Dawkins: Yes! [audience applause]
Krauss: And I think that's really important. Yeah, well you can applaud for him,
he's unfortunately deceased. I'll let him know that you...
The other thing that I have to say
behind my philosophy of reaching out - and I know we have talked about
this before a little bit -
I believe in trying to explain
the wonderful and mysterious nature of the universe, which is
far more mysterious and interesting than any science fiction writer
could ever come up with.
But, in order to get people to be receptive to that awe,
I think you have to do a little work.
For some reason, I get asked to talk to teachers a lot
and I tell them that I think the biggest mistake that any
teacher makes is to assume their students are interested in what they have
to say.
Now it's actually true - it doesn't have to be a teacher -
the car salesman, politician, anyone. I really do think you have to
work and reach people where they are before they will even be receptive,
because they won't understand how how it relates to anything
they're interested in.
So when I'm trying to reach people
about science I try to go to where they are in some sense, work very hard,
and that was the purpose behind the Star Trek book, for example.
I think as a biologist maybe you have this
happen less to you than I do as a physicist - but when people ask me at a
party 'what do you do?'
and I say 'well I'm a physicist' and they say 'well, how 'bout baseball season?'
Dawkins: I'm shocked, I'm horrified by that.
Krauss: Yeah, I know, it's true. But then you say 'well, what about time travel?' or
something like that and then people realize they're fascinated by
those ideas, but they don't make the leap and realize in some sense that that's science.
That the things that
intrinsically fascinate people are really the things we're lucky enough to, uh, in general,
be paid to do. And so I think
one has to try and find a hook, and as I said in biology, you may not have found
the hook, although
the hook in this case: one of the big interests of course is evolution and its
kind in Anti-hook nowadays, at least in the United States.
The fact that evolution is so fascinating
as an idea - and I think by the way that we physicists are also largely to blame
in many ways for the fact that Darwin isn't appreciated more than he is.
We did a wonderful public relations campaign
For Albert Einstein, but I have to say as I, who over the last for years spent time in
public debate about evolution versus intelligent design,
I really do think that if I had to pick the greatest scientist the last few 100
years, it would be Charles Darwin, and not Albert Einstein.
That a single person could so radically change
an entire field, combining observation and theory,
just amazes me and you really should be promoting what a remarkable human achievement that was.