There's something really beautiful about science, that human beings can ask these questions and can answer them. You can make models of nature and understand how it works.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the beauty of science as a tool for understanding the natural world through inquiry.
Margaret Geller emphasizes the inherent beauty in science, illustrating how humans possess the unique ability to ask profound questions about the universe and find answers through inquiry and exploration. By creating models of nature, we can deepen our understanding of its workings, showcasing the power of scientific investigation and the human capacity for curiosity and comprehension.
In practice
During a science presentation, I quoted Margaret Geller to inspire students about the importance of asking questions.
Hunger, inadequate medical care, poor housing, and inferior schools are enemies of the sense of wonder. It is easier and less expensive in the long run to prevent a loss of imagination by providing adequate nutrition, housing, medical care, and schooling than it is to try to restore that loss.
When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.
A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.
We need to look at NASA, not as a handout, but as an investment.
It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.
The way I see it, commercial interests should manage a lunar base while NASA gets on with the really important task of flying to Mars.
The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.
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