Refinement of logical and reasoning ability is the primary reason for learning maths and science.
Science also serves the purpose of helping us understand the living and the non-living world we live in. In simple terms, everything we experience or see in our life is science. It is in this context that we talk about scientific temperament as a way of life – the ability to see the science in ‘everything’ and be able to explain the action or the lack of it in all things around us.
Science involves exploration, experimentation, and explanation of the living and non-living things and their visible and non-visible interactions; for example, explaining why all things on earth fall towards the surface of earth through the concept of (invisible) gravity. Learning science is about being able to discover and apply scientific rules and principles in everyday life and living.
How to discover and apply scientific rules?
Fortunately, in the course of our evolution we have been able to explain and document a lot about the living and non-living world we are part of. We can easily access the ‘collective mind and understanding’ of the world if we could read all that is written down in scientific literature. Indeed, reading is the best way to get initiated into science and then fine-tune the understanding with conversations, experiments and assessments. Interestingly, reading scientific literature helps us access the knowledge already there as well as the questions which remain unanswered – there cannot be a better way to learn science.
In this discussion, we wish to emphasise a singular new perspective on this question – the critical role of language in learning the physical sciences – physics and chemistry.
It is hard, almost impossible, to imagine the role of language competence in a subject such as physics! Physics and chemistry are very practical subjects, perhaps the most practical subjects to be valid across the universe, beyond our earth, solar system, and the Milky Way – the laws of physics seem to be universal and the law of conservation of mass also seems to be equally universal.
In case you are thinking about biology, we may gently remind you that we still do not really know the basis of life outside earth; we think it must be similar to ours, i.e. depend on water and oxygen. To top it all, we still do not know a lot about our body and mind. It is quite possible that when we come to know more about life away from earth, we may also see the universality in the application of the principles of biology.
It may just suffice to share that among the most eminent of physicists of all times, the lion’s share goes to theoretical physicists and not the experimental physicists. One would think it to be other way round in a subject that is all about explaining observations. Here is a list of theoretical physicists, picked from Wikipedia:
Ancient Times
Archimedes (287–212 BCE)
15th–16th century
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)
16th–17th century
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
17th–18th century
Isaac Newton (1642–1727)
18th–19th century
Charles Coulomb (1736–1806)
19th century
Michael Faraday (1791–1867), James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)
19th–20th century
Max Planck (1858–1947), Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
20th century
Niels Bohr (1885–1962), Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), Louis de Broglie (1892–1987), Satyendra Nath Bose
(1894–1974), Richard Feynman (1918-88)
The list is partial and adequate to illustrate our point – ‘practical’ subjects such as Physics and Chemistry are also quite language driven.
We must, of course, put a disclaimer here that we, the authors, are no authority on Physics to judge the aforementioned list of physicists, and the list is for illustration purpose only to make a singular point – thinking (and imagination) skills are perhaps more powerful than experiments and observations.
However, we can, with all our conviction, say that the human brain is the most amazing powerhouse – it runs far and faster than any machine yet created. Powerful thinking skill can conquer all!
