Everybody loves science, everybody needs science, but not everybody knows or accepts that to be true. For some reason, there is this unconscious bias against it–that it’s too hard to learn, that it’s only for those who have the brainpower to study it, or that you either have the “science gene” or you don’t. But science is for everyone and it’s everywhere. Science helps explain the “what” and the “why” of everything we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste (and, to some extent, what we think and feel). The more we learn, the better we understand our world and each other.
People think “science” is something you learn in a classroom or in lecture halls. But science is more than that. I read somewhere that what you learn in school makes up only 5% of your knowledge of science. The other 95% you learn from day-to-day life. But how often do we, as adults, have the time to be curious scientists and stop and think about the “why”? We’re consumed with work, family affairs, and especially our screens. Science just isn’t accessible to us. Why can’t we be scientists? Children are curious scientists all the time: “Why is the grass green?”, “Do animals get hiccups?”, “What happens if I stick my finger up my nose?” But as we grow, we stop asking these questions as life gets in the way. We lose our curiosity and our desire to understand the “why”. We learn what we need for our daily lives, but nothing more. Wouldn't it be fun to better understand how our world works: “What would happen if the earth stopped spinning?”, “If we genetically modify ourselves does that make us a new species?”, “How is your brain understanding this series of colored pixels on a screen?”. If we understood, would that change the way we think and act? Would we understand our fellow humans better? The only way you can answer this is to think like a curious scientist and start asking “Why?”
Suppose we introduced kids at a young age to the scientific thought process and encouraged them to keep asking “why” for longer and more often than they naturally would. Would it enable them to be more thoughtful adults? Better learners? Creators, engineers, scientists? Better humans? I’m not sure, but I believe it’s worth trying.
What if there was a place that made science accessible? What if you could stop by anytime and pick up books on a wide variety of "why", "what", and "how" topics? What if, on any given night, you could listen to people who work in the scientific field and have them explain what they do, how they do it and why they do it? What if you could tinker around yourself and build something real? What if your kids could do this along with you? And what if this place was as easy to get to as your local coffee shop? Those are the questions I asked myself and those are the questions that led to The Thinking Spot.
Coming soon to a street near you! Would you be interested?