Developing our own hypothesis

Once in awhile I meet professors who not only are passionate about their research, but also genuinely care about their students' academic career and challenge us intellectually to think beyond textbooks and course notes. They make me feel very lucky and want to stay in school forever to keep learning. They make me forget about the pain of having to memorize textbooks and the dread to finish lab reports in the middle of the night. I'm a nerd like that.

This term I'm taking a course on "Evolutionary Biology" (BIOL 359) with professor Jonathan Witt, and he is one of those professors who really do care. At the beginning of every class, he spends 5 minutes to introduce 2 "words of the day" to us, because he thinks science students don't know enough vocabularies. In almost every other class he in one way or another tells us he thinks evolution is the most fascinating thing and he is convinced that he has one of the best jobs in the world because not only does he gets to study it, he gets to teach it to us. In today's class, he said the following:

"Evolutionary biology is the glue that defies all biology, behavioural sciences and life sciences. So when you're studying biochemistry, or molecular cell biology, try and think about evolutionary consequences of what you're learning about . And try to ask questions. Because when you start asking questions, you might develop really neat hypothesis that you might at some point go out and test, and that's how science proceeds. But not only that, evolution is what I think a much broader and much wider inquire - and that is change. Change is pervasive; change is fundamental to everything on planet. Everything changes and evolves. So if you start thinking about evolution, not only biological of change, but in the whole modern context of change, then you will see that your life will become very interesting.

For example, when I walk into a grocery store, I don't just walk up and down the aisles. I look around and think about change. Our global food distribution system has evolved into a just-in-time system. The result of that is there's no more demand for canned food. Who would buy it when you get fresh food from California, Chile, even China? The consequence of that is our food stock in Ontario today has never been lower than there has been in the past. We are now supremely vulnerable to a shock that could come out of nowhere. Who knows what it'll be, but when you think about change, it's these shocks that bring down our societies."

I really like what he said because I think that can be applied to every course in every discipline. We cannot get away from exams and paper, but what we can do is to keep asking questions. I like how he brings things together and asks us to formulate our own hypothesis. Because if we don't have questions, how much are we really learning? At the same time, we can't always just sit here and expect someone to give us all the answers. Education is about that constant curiosity and inquiry about why things are the way they are, then going out to find answers. Albert Einstein once said, "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious." Now this makes me think, what kind of hypothesis do I 

want to develop for the placement this summer? What kind of things do I want to investigate? What kind of background research do I have to do before I go to prepare me for my "experiments"?

Professor Witt also recommended a book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond, and wished that we would read it over the summer. "It's a book about change," he said.