Science for the People

An example of fractal geometry in nature

500 Words on Thursday | by Lee Schneider

I was in a room with people cheering about fractal geometry. Not a small room and not a few people — a couple hundred of them. Later, I was in another room to hear a doctor speak about female menopause and I stayed for the whole talk. Yes, the speaker covered prostate screening also and I was working, covering the event for the Huffington Post, but the speaker was that good. I looked around the room during both talks. Lots of everyday people. All ages. Hip and unhip. No Phi Beta Kappa keys in evidence, though one of the talks, the fractal geometry one, got technical as it delved into Mandelbrot Sets. There are times that I’d rather drive into oncoming traffic than try to understand what a Mandelbrot Set is, but the speaker was so good we were all on board.

It was science for the people.

The event was the I Can Do It conference in San Diego and it covered topics like integrative medicine, how to live in a state of happiness, (“Would Vermont work for that?”) and some fringy stuff, at least for me, like past life regression. (Why in their past life was everyone a king or a queen? Wasn’t anybody a garbage man in the Middle Ages?)

How do you get people to cheer for fractals? Science education is top-of-the-list for a lot of people. Educators worry that kids are turning away from careers in science. American Idol seems the shorter route to fame and fortune, and you don’t even need to know how to sing.

Elliot Washor

Elliot Washor is one of the people who’s thinking hard about how to fix this. In the US, one student drops out of school every 12 seconds. Elliot is co-founder and co-director (along with Dennis Littky) of Big Picture Learning. Big Picture has started new schools and changed existing schools. They’re willing to get their hands dirty – literally. Elliot wrote recently about a welding simulator that he thought was really cool. It empowered the operator to learn a real-world skill and some math, too. Michael B. Crawford, author of “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” has written compellingly about how people who work with their hands might be happier than people who push ideas around on computer screens.

Dr. Bruce Lipton

If you take the body out of learning – well, it’s just a lot less interesting to learn things. Why not keep it in? Include the tactile and physical part of learning and learning stays relevant. Why did those speakers I heard have people cheering? The answer is also about the body. The speakers were Dr. Bruce Lipton and Dr. Christiane Northrup, and they both had everyone’s attention for one reason. They were giving us vital information about our wellness, and everybody’s interested in that kind of science.

Science for the people reaches out to include persons of every age and gender. I might even go to another menopause talk if Dr. Northrup is speaking.

Dr. Christiane Northrup