"In science we... tend to be interested in things that have been already labeled "interesting." ...[W]e ...think science happens in institutionalized contexts, and that the latest fashions and the "cutting edge" ...is where science occurs... [P]eople who get interested in science often read... books that tell you about the cutting edge... and they get excited, but it's not that they have had an intimate contact with science and got excited. It's rather that sociologically they have been told to be excited about something that's supposed to be exciting. ...They haven't had any exposure to "theory X" but they... are told hero stories... romantic stories... But those... "sciences in flower"... are already blossoming. ...[T]hey have lots and lots of intricate structures up there and [are] connected to lots and lots of things. But at the same time, as with plants, we should look at "sciences in sprout." ...We have the impression that when we stop doing science and go on holiday, or close up our offices and shut down the laboratories for the weekend, science stops happening. And when you close the textbooks and the professor says, "OK, end of class!" you can forget about science... and it stops happening. But that's not true. There's something that keeps practicing science 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, nonstop everywhere in the world, everywhere in the universe, and that's called Nature! If you take... even this blob of air in front of me... there are so many beautiful and intricate and unbelievably complicated, complex s that are dancing together and trying to satisfy one another, and succeeding and satisfying this huge... network of patterns. That is science! It's amazing, and conversely, there is nothing easier to discover than science. ...Everywhere I look, there must be science, because we live in this universe. We cannot even escape living in this universe. We need... imagination and a little bit of patience because you often fail, but especially... we need to look, imagine and maybe a willingness to be trained in acquiring better vision, which is called scientific education. ...It's wonderful that people get interested in science because they're supposed to be interested in science and read... and so on, but that they also try in daily life, phenomena around them, however modest. It would be nice if they started noticing sciences in sprout."
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Tadashi Tokieda
(Japanese: 時枝ćŁ; born 1968) is a Japanese mathematician, working in mathematical physics. He is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University; previously he was a fellow and Director of Studies of Mathematics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is also very active in inventing, collecting, and studying toys that uniquely reveal and explore real-world surprises of mathematics and physics. In comparison with most mathematicians, he had an unusual path in life: he started as a painter, and then becam
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