The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scientific Curiosity

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With razor-sharp wit and insight, Robin slices into the biggest questions of our time. The Importance of Being Interested left me smiling and thinking more deeply.’– Commander Chris Hadfield, astronaut and bestselling author It claims to be popular science. Written by a man who confesses to not understand science, yet tells us to accept what science teaches us, because you know science is fact. Well, it isn't really, is it? But Ince thinks it is even though he is incapable of proving or understanding anything science tells him. Meanwhile he summarily and harshly disparages other schools of thought such as theology, religion, conspiracy theory and accuses those writers and thinkers of blinding people with lies and mistruths to confuse the listener to a point where they accept without understanding, and Ince is very clear on his distaste for such thinking. Yet, he accepts the science he is told even though he fails to understand it. This is very much a case of "Listen to what I say, but don't listen to anyone else, everyone else is wrong, I am right but I cannot prove it".

The Importance of Being Interested – Another Word The Importance of Being Interested – Another Word

For those who know C.S.Lewis's take down of the Green Book in The Abolition of Man lectures, we have a very similar situation here with Ince. Lewis accuses the authors of "The Green Book" of unwittingly doing damage to the young mind through poor quality teaching of values, meaning and how we react to them. In a similar way, Ince will damage the developing mind with his extremely poorly thought through ideas, because he tried to inure us against psuedo science, conspiracy and theology with weak arguments that are more emotional than scientific, and yet if he applies the same to what he knows of science then he absolutely has to throw science out the window as well as religion. It teaches the reader to have inconsistent set of values to judge the worthiness of information, whereas what a person needs is to be able to judge the value of information on a consistent basis. Ince does not do this once.Never has a[n] [audio]book resonated with me so strongly and heavily. The only thing school taught me about science was that it wasn’t me for me - I hopeless at it. And so I let myself believe that. I’ve always been fascinated by space and the stars, but filed that fascination away into the “not for me” drawer in the mental filing cabinet. Cordova DI, Lepper MR. Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1996; 88:715–730. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.88.4.715. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] Robin has done it again, bringing together his insatiable curiosity and thirst for learning and sharing that fascination with others.

The Importance of Being Interested Robin Ince – The Importance of Being Interested

Mike: Thank you so much for your thoughts and questions—I appreciate the opportunity to think through this with you and clarify what I wrote. I’m glad to hear you think some of the values I articulated here are in the same territory as Bill Cronon’s definition of a liberal education.

Hung W, Jonassen DH, Liu R. Problem-based learning. In: Spector JM, Merrill MD, Van Merrienboer J, Driscoll MP, editors. Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. 3. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 2008. pp. 485–506. [ Google Scholar] Blurb: Robin Ince abandoned science at secondary school, bored by a fog of dull lessons and intimidated by the barrage of equations. But, twenty years later, he fell in love with it and now he presents one of the most popular science podcasts. Every year, he meets hundreds of the world's greatest thinkers. I found my love for science through curiosity and I’m now a scientist so, guess anyone can overcome their preconceived high school dislike of science.