You may ask first, what is subjective science?

Before giving you my answer, let me talk a little bit about myself.

I have always firmly believed that science represents rationality. Scientists collect objective data, anaylze and draw conlucions on propositions and theorems that could possibly explain this world we are living in right now. I used to believe that science was exclusive as one needs to possess a tremendous amount of specialty knowledge to step into an academic science field and participate in science researches, to really trace and work upon the progress made by all the preceding scientists……

Until I watched a youtube video about a physics experiment done in public. When the man in the video said that he was going to introduce the wave property of light to some random tourists at the beach, I assumed that his purpose was to make fun of other people. It took me a whole week of class in high school to understand what is light and how it could behave as a wave. It was as astonishing as the time I was told that there was no Santa Claus when I was six. There was no chance that man could effectively teach people in five minutes. It was mission impossible.

He made it. And I loved seeing how people showed a great “Ah ha!” face when they were enlightened by their new discovery about light. It was then I realized that science education for public is not as hard as I imagined. The man in the video simply used a combination of analogies and metaphors to help visualize the concept of “wave”. And showed people how light had the corresponding properties by letting them observe the famous double-slit experiment. The crucial part of science education, I concluded, is to explain science in an “everyday language”, and to show science with perceivable (visible, audible, etc) evidence.

What do I mean by “everyday language”?

Let’s see how wikipedia describes the double-slit experiment:

“The experiment belongs to a general class of “double path” experiments, in which a wave is split into two separate waves that later combine into a single wave. Changes in the path lengths of both waves result in a phase shift, creating an interference pattern. “

Do you understand what is double-slit experiment now? I suppose most people would say no. (Physics major or scientists can skip this part) What is a phase shift? What is an interference pattern? This would be endless if we click on every physics jargon that leads to another web page.

Suppose you are inside a closed dark room and there are two narrow short vertical slits on the wall. There is light projected on the other side of the room through the slits. If the light is a beam and only travels in a straight line, we should expect to see two slit-like lines of light projected. Yet what we actually see is a pattern of multiple bright and dark bands. This is the observation that opposes to our assumption “light is a beam”. Boom, now you know the general observation and procedure of the double-slit experiment.

Science is not exclusive. Different methods of communication and various tools of demonstration make science inclusive, comprehensible, or even fun. And I want to contribute to building the bridge between you and science in my own way.

Then what is this blog about?

What if science is not about humans discovering things? What if it’s the things that let themselves to be discovered?

Imagine a new technology which could make things speak. Yes, things, all sorts of things.

I can ask the cloud at what time it would rain before I go out for work. I can ask the tree holes about people’s secrets. I can even ask the electricity how fast can it travel through the wires.

It’s simply that sometimes they react to me, sometimes they don’t. Depend on their moods.

Imagine what could happen if this technology is used for science? Science could speak for itself. Reports will be written in an active-voice instead of passive-voice. We will be investigating subjective science instead of objective science.

Citation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment