Eventually, I would learn that stories are not just a way of communicating science; they are intrinsic to science, actually part of doing science. My own story of merging these Two Cultures – for me, literary writing and particle physics – was complicated by a Third Culture, religion. I grew up in Utah, in an era when Mormon women could have physics careers, technically, but following this path was difficult, lonely, and considered a threat to the traditional family model. We were encouraged to pursue education, not to prepare for competitive careers but for traditional roles as wives and mothers. This worldview, where a woman’s education is merely a safeguard if her husband can’t work, exemplifies what George W Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson called ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’. It is a mindset that stifles ambition and curiosity. In fact, in my world, ambition in a woman signified pride, selfishness, sin.
She definitely has some good story telling skills.
I agree with her that storytelling is important in physics. Feynman is probably a most well-known example for that. Reading different versions of the same stories he's been telling over and over, you realize he really has perfected this story telling skill. To the point where he probably himself does not remember exactly what happened as memories get shaped by such story telling. Yet, it's those physicists that people remember. The one who can engage the audience in a 10 minute talk at the American Physics Society conference. The one who can leave them with a take-home message, even if they do not understand the details of the equations. Story telling is what brings you far as a scientist. Story telling based on a solid foundation of physics brings you even further. Those two skills are indeed very complementary.
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cotton 4 Nov
True, stories make complex concepts stick.
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