In this post, we asked some members of our research group what science means to them.

From Silvia:

“For me, science is basic for the development of the society. It underpins every aspect of our daily lives, from the simplest conveniences we often overlook, to the most complex technologies. It helps us to understand the systems to be able to improve them. Ultimately, science drives our curiosity and aspirations for progress, inspiring us to pursue innovation and shape a better future.”

From Emanuela:

“Science to me is really exciting because I can create something different and eventually new every time. It’s not repetitive. It’s like a form of art.”

From Dan:

“Science is exploration. Not having all the answers but doing it anyway. It is like some form of a puzzle you tackle, one which fights back. You engage it knowing that the most likely outcome is failure, and you have to be ok with that. To me, it means messing around, failing fast and often, but taking a kind of faith and pride in your failure. It is not wrong to fail. Failure is part of the process. You learn something new from it, you can tweak it and improve it so that next time it gets a little bit better. Science is Incremental improvement. Try something. If something doesn’t work, change it and do it again.”

From Ben:

“In general, science helps understand the world around you, and to appreciate its beauty, because there’s a lot of beauty in nature, and you really start to appreciate this in a deep way through science. Science is a way to rationalize and analyze hard problems and to logically think about hypotheses and solutions. It’s like a disciplined training for your mind in general, to be objective about problems, and be continually critical of your own approach until you get some theory, model or result that sticks.”

From Neil:

“ I think science for me is about exploring the “magic” of the world. What I mean by this is whenever I think of science, I immediately think of science fiction novels/films etc. Within that I always think of the inflexion point when the “magic” became science, for example, there was a time when humanity didn’t have fire and then it suddenly had fire. The point where the “didn’t” became did -> that’s science for me”

We would love to hear from you. What does science mean to you?