The laboratory notebook...

I remember those days, keeping a laboratory notebook in my high school chemistry class. Bunsen burners, graduated cylinders, pipettes, and titration... I recall that my chemistry teacher was particularly adamant about keeping a good laboratory notebook. The intent was to document a hypothesis, describe the experiments and initial analysis, and then the interpretation of the experiments with the goal of proving (or disproving) the hypothesis. To my recollection, we never had instances of “disproving” any particular hypothesis since the experiments in mind were already “proven”, but you could always get variations due contaminants or not following instructions in the experiments completely.

At the end of the day, the focus seemed to be around actually “showing” chemistry to those of us that need to see and feel and to “experience” the scientific method, hearkening back to the days of the great scientists and philosophers that had such a zeal for knowledge and understanding... Ah, if we could only instill that same sense of academic adventure into schooling nowadays. Our focus seems to have been shifted from learning to a more business-like world of tests and certifications. It’s a shame, really... whatever happened to rewarding inquisitiveness? Are we to assume that we “know” enough now, so rather than teach our youth how to theorize, we just need to teach them how to empirically do “known” things better? Can we really distill the essence of education in the 21st century to “faster, better, cheaper”? Ugh...

In the “History of Western Philosophy”, Bertrand Russell talks of the chasm in “thought” between the Hellenic era and the Renaissance, a “dark ages” of thought. The Romans, it seems, were more practical in thought, focusing more on building an empire than on advancing thought. We seem to be in a similar “rut”, an “intellectual dark age”. Sure, there’s innovation, but to what extent are we innovating? I would argue that we’re innovating for a practical purpose, much like the Romans - that practical purpose seems to be primarily oriented towards profit and solving “real world” problems. Whatever happened to thinking about “non-real world” problems, theorizing and applying our minds to understanding the “unknown”? I guess it still goes on, but do we sensationalize it? How many “thinkers” do we see in mainstream news? Sure, we have “dreamers”, but even those “dreamers” are “conceiving” ideas geared towards a practical solution to one or many of life’s “problems”, a very practical approach. Maybe I’m just not seeing things correctly here, I’ll just need to focus on understanding in a “faster, cheaper, better” way...