Last June I won 200 pounds in a contest at UCL for PhD students. The challenge was to explain to a lay audience my research in only 2 minutes. I got ready for it -I discovered that it takes me about 3 days. Without knowing what it was and without much awareness around, I won the conquest. It was a raining and dark Friday evening, but I was happy as it were sunny. A certain interest in this sort of speeches came shortly afterwards. I started hearing that the type of 2 or 3-minute presentations is important for the public, something praised by companies and institutions. I even questioned myself: perhaps, I said, this is the thing. I know now that it is not the thing.
After this, I was encouraged by my supervisor to participate in Famelab last November. I failed. The challenge was to be the winner in London and to have the chance to spend a weekend with winners across the UK in a training course. I did not win; I did not even get to myself a second chance as a runner-up. The experience was bitter because I could have done it better, oh, much better. I won my heat -of which I am satisfied (took me again 3 days to get ready), but the final, for which I had to prepare another presentation, caught me wearing underwear. I was not surprised, anyhow. Two details of my life proved again to be my best definition: the ability to press myself down in determining moments; and the ability to leave the work half done. Whether I will be capable of reversing this label of myself or not, is something I would like to find out sooner than later.
It is partly because this experience that I felt a kind of awkward feeling watching last Sunday Brian 's show on BBC. He delivered a "lesson" on fundamental Quantum Physics for the network's friends ("celebrities"), half way between the comedy and the religious ritual.
Some parts were ok, some were good, but overall I found it out-of-touch and lacking creativity. Boring. Besides, why particle Physics? Why always the same, the same, the same? The kind of reminiscence to Oxford or Eton College style and knowledge (Mr. Paxman and the University challenge) makes me depressed, as much as these houses decorated in velvet and vintage furniture. It tastes like a big piece of granite, full of cold, and empty of poetry.
I distrusted Brian from the moment he wrote an equation in a chalk board. He drawed "t =" and then, in a careless way, a numerator divided by a denominator, in such a way that the equal sign did not lay in the middle of the fraction. You might find it excessive, but I thought: "what kind of a scientist writes an equation in such a careless manner?". A few minutes later, he asked someone to do an arithmetic operation on the board. However, there was no space in the board to write it. Call me crazy. Demonstrations of sloppiness make me suspicious as well.
I certainly dislike the arrogance of Science above anything else. I hate the religious status and prerogatives attached to Science. To me the only clear difference between Science and everything else is Mathematics, from which stems its robustness and validity: the more you know Math, the more you use it, the more you are a Scientist. Furthermore: a fundamental score of benefits extracted from Science lay in its applications. However, professors, experts and pundits are becoming narrower, weaker and weaker in Math and most of them scorn the work done with bare hands in labs and workshops or, at least, are not among their priorities. Science is entering the land of the storytellers. It is indeed the game of being like God, because it seems that everything Science does or knows is done by the virtue of talking (words): the way Yahve created the world.... Ah! The beauty is, nevertheless, in the detail, in doing. When you do, you realize you have no power whatsoever: Nature won't behave after your words. The process of Conquest becomes then impressive and beautiful.
The religion of Science. The scam of a modus vivendi. The bourgeoisie of a barren intellectuality.
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