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The Thrill of Discovery1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Gerrit L. Verschuur
Gerrit L. Verschuur*
Affiliation:
4802 Brookstone Terrace, Bowie, Maryland 20715, U.S.A.

Extract

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In the process of communicating to the student or the lay person, we often forget to point out why it is that scientists are involved in their esoteric explorations of the universe. As a result, the scientific endeavor is painted as being somewhat removed from “real life.” This unfortunate misconception can be remedied by discussing the thrill of discovery.

Scientists love to “boldly go where no man has gone before.” The act of discovery produces a heady sensation akin to the thrill of victory for an athlete. The thrill may come as a surprise, as the result of a serendipitous turn of events, or may be experienced at the conclusion of a dedicated piece of research whose end-point was always understood. In either case the joy is associated with the revelation of what was previously unknown or not understood. It is this joy that is the reward for the researcher.

Type
2. Astronomy and Culture
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 105: The Teaching of Astronomy , 1990 , pp. 68 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Footnotes

1

An expanded version of this talk appears in Interstellar Matters (Springer Verlag, 1988).

References

2 Star Trek.

3 Maslow, Abraham H., “Music Education and Peak Experiences,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2, 1962 Google Scholar.

4 Goble, Frank G., The Third Force. Grossman Publishers, 1962. New York.Google Scholar

5 The reader will appreciate that most of these “confessions” were obtained with the promise not to reveal names, a sobering comment on our shared attitudes toward the conduct of scientific research and the image that researchers find they need to uphold even in the eyes of their peers. This topic surely deserves further, more formal, research.

6 Goble, Frankl G., op. cit.