part0024

I also like the historical connection between the British and the Greeks; Corfu was, for some years, administered by the British with cricket still being played on the green in front of the Durrell’s garden. And, in Crete, who can forget the impressive ruin of ‘Europe’s Oldest City’: Sir Arthur Evans began excavations in Knossos in 1900, and they continued for 35 years! Dedication to the cause, I call that. Eventually, he gave the whole site to the Greeks and they showed their appreciation by allowing British archaeologists to visit and study the site at any time – something that continues to this day…

And who can forget how keen Lord Byron was on Greece and how much the Greeks took him to their hearts – there is even a statue of him in Athens! So, I go to the Greek islands quite often – mainly Corfu, Crete, and Rhodes. And regarding the latter, Lindos must be my favourite place in Greece.

“Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!”

Similarly, I had a relative who once gave advice to another relative: “L-, if you don’t have money, always make out that you have…” (It turns out that L- was in fact quite well off, so I guess the advice was hardly necessary). Another example concerns someone I know well who now works for his own company but used to, for a while, work for a university. I have been advised, by someone at the university who would know, that my friend was on the senior lecturer pay-scale. Despite this, the latter assures me, in all sincerity, that he was on the professorial pay-scale, presumably for reasons of image maintenance. What, you may ask, has all this to do with science and society or Martian rockets? Well, I am convinced that delusions of grandeur (amongst adults) are one of the main reasons why I can’t catch a rocket to Mars; and I will briefly try to explain below why this is the case.

I can understand why a person running a small business, such as the friend mentioned above, may need to ‘big themselves up’. It is, after all, a very competitive world – it’s a ‘dog eat dog’ marketplace where to survive a businessman needs a ‘can do’ attitude just to keep his head above water. But away from the commercial world, in the academic and research world, surely we should be more objective and straight-forward i.e. ‘call a spade a spade’ as my mother used to say (who was, you might not be surprised to learn, from Yorkshire). In science, a spade is in fact always a spade; it is not for example, a spade 60% of the time and an ‘agricultural implement’ 40% of the time. By the way, this is, if I may say so without being accused of being politically incorrect, one reason why English is so well suited to describing scientific research – and hence why it is the language that nearly all scientific papers are published in. English is a remarkably simple language in its grammar and, importantly, does not employ all the colourful imagery and metaphor that is seen in the Latin-based languages. I am not a philologist, but I believe that the reason for this has to do with the fact that English is a relatively modern language compared to, for example, French. Consequently, English has mercifully dispensed with such archaic complexities as continuous colourful metaphor, changing grammar depending upon whom or what one is addressing or referring to, and the (apparently random) assigning of gender to inanimate objects. Yes, when you call a spade a spade in English you are also doing it using a language that inherently, in its style and structure, calls a spade a spade – particularly in the American usage of English.

But why does any of this mean that I can’t catch the rocket? The answer is that not calling a spade a spade, or ‘bigging oneself up’ or ‘trying to cut a good figure’, or whatever you want to call it – perhaps it could simply be called vanity, is not a characteristic that particularly accelerates or encourages scientific or technological progress. For example, since I have mentioned scientific papers, it is worth pointing out that an emphasis on the presentation of ‘pretty maths’ (something that was mentioned above in relation to Dyson and Feynman), rather than on real novelty or genuinely useful new approaches, will tend to lead to stale/unprofitable avenues of publication. Another way of expressing this is to say that 95% of all journal papers are of very limited use and do not demonstrate good impact or have a strong influence on scientific thought or technological progress. The reasons for this include the widespread obsession with involved mathematical presentation as well as the modern tendency towards dogma in science, which was also discussed above. However, ‘cutting a good figure’ by those involved in science has its most conspicuous effect on society through education, since education, particularly in schools, is where the majority of the public have contact with scientific concepts. We covered education/teaching above in some detail, but I would like to return to the subject, since I do feel it is quite relevant to the subject of this chapter.

Science education is an extensive field that could easily fill a book by itself and there is not room here to discuss it in detail. I would, however, like to say how much respect I have in general for teachers (or in fact for members of any caring profession). They work long hours and often take great pains to ensure that they help their students as much as possible. I am sure the pay they receive is hardly in proportion to the work they do and the contribution they make to society. Interestingly though, I believe that most teachers understand that helping others is one of the most effective ways of helping oneself and that the satisfaction they glean from their pastoral roles is one of the things that compensates a relatively meagre pay packet.

Having said all that, I do believe that some of the major problems in science education result from teachers, and others associated with the education process, trying to adopt the role of intellectual or, again, trying to big themselves up. Take, for example, A levels, where the decision of what subjects you choose usually has a strong influence on one’s entire career choice. We often hear that there are insufficient trained engineers (particularly female engineers) – what might be the reasons for this? One conspicuous reason may be the scaring off (for want of a better phrase) of potential science students by an unnecessarily complex and esoteric treatment of the subject at the advanced level in schools and colleges. Open, for example, a modern A level physics textbook and you will find, possibly on the first pages, much coverage of quarks and many of the esoteric characteristics associated with such (relatively non-physical) phenomena. What is the likelihood that the A level student opening such a book will be employed in a post that will necessitate knowledge of the characteristics of quarks? Virtually zero! What does the presentation of such material as the first thing in a physics textbook achieve? Possibly it disorientates the reader, who may feel that the subject is one they cannot relate to, is difficult, esoteric, and will be of little practical use to them in their careers. While this may be true of studying quarks, it has never been, and should never be, generally true of studying physics. In fact, I can’t think of a subject that would be more practical and useful to anyone who wants a technical education and/or career than physics! I can’t help thinking that the other thing it may achieve is to enable the book’s author and various physics educators to go on something of an ego trip at the expense of physics education in the UK.

To summarise, I feel that the curriculum of A level physics is becoming too involved and has gone beyond what is required or would be essential for entering a technical degree course. There are too many equations and there is too much coverage, both in terms of breadth and depth – which I suspect is putting students off studying the subject and thereby reducing the UK’s technical skills base. Rather than expecting students to appreciate esoteric physics and multitudes of equations it would, I believe, be more beneficial to test the student’s understanding of the various concepts involved and the application of physics to various real technologies that they can relate to. This was an approach adopted by the Nuffield A Level Physics course that I remember being taught back in the early 1980’s. It seemed enlightened to me then and it still does now – I don’t know why the modern A Level examination boards (or at least the ones I have dealt with recently) appear to have abandoned the Nuffield Physics curriculum.

The other sciences also suffer from similar problems, manifested in terms of the A level biology memory game and in A level chemistry, legions of organic reactions. Are students embarking on, say, engineering degrees likely to find knowledge of these organic reactions useful in their studies and careers? I think not; and this provides a strong indicator that the traditional grounding in maths, physics, and chemistry may not be the best way to prepare for a degree course and career in engineering.

Having again mentioned maths, following the earlier lengthy discussion I would just like to add that this is an extremely powerful tool for a person such as an engineer, but unfortunately I don’t think it is generally taught as such. Is the traditional massive emphasis on calculus really justified? Is an engineering student, in truth, likely to find they need to recall how to perform ‘proof by induction’, or to employ the binomial theorem? I think not. When I was studying A level maths, the course covered such subjects but provided no coverage of statistical analysis - which is very important in, for example, medicine and a range of industries. Consequently, when undertaking my PhD, I had to teach myself statistical techniques such as multiple regression (with appropriate non-linear transforms), effectively from scratch.

Many students take A level maths , and according to media report graduates and non-graduates who took maths A-level earn on average 10 per cent more than those of similar ability and background who did not; however, in current maths A level courses there is little emphasis on applications and real-world needs. (Pexels photograph by Andrea Piacquadio, used with permission of Pexels.)

To summarise, I feel there should be a move away from the wide-range of involved closed-form maths techniques that are currently being taught in schools and colleges, towards approaches that are very powerful and likely to be useful to the students later in their careers. Such techniques definitely include statistical analysis and are likely to include numerical methods that have proved so powerful in solving problems in disciplines such as engineering. But perhaps the most important new form of modelling/analysis that promises to change our lives in innumerable ways is artificial intelligence (AI) and specifically deep learning. Surely it is time to dispense with our delusions of grandeur and instead embrace the possibilities of existing new AI technologies by introducing our students to them.