In the January newsletter I sent to my subscribers this month I spoke about the joy of teaching. Specifically, I talked about infecting kids with the wonderment of studying fossils. The kids belong to the PaleoZone club sponsored by WIPS—the Western Interior Paleontological Society. Recently, I was invited to speak to a different audience: art students in Connecticut interested in the creative interplay between art and science. The theme I will promote during my talk is that the wonder induced through the enjoyment of imaginative fiction and imagery helps inspire the rational achievements we associate with science and technology. 

A key component of that inspiration depends on sharing a vision of what is true. What is real.  Or at least what has the potential of becoming real.

As a child of the 1950s and 60s I read science fiction. I recall reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, awed by the grand vision of a human civilization that rose and fell across the immensity of our galaxy—a swirling veil of star systems which even light takes 200,000 years to cross. As a college student I avidly watched the first Star Trek television series—as did many engineers who would ultimately join NASA in order to try to make some version of a Star Trek future come true.

Humans owe their success on our green and blue planet to the ability to share improbable visions and often make them come true. Unfortunately, that same ability can tear civilizations apart when different factions become grounded in alternate, incompatible realities.

I became attracted to science because it’s techniques work exceptionally well. Ask nature a question by setting up an experiment that tests only one variable at a time. Nature answers such questions with yes or no answers. The process is slow and has a hard time answering some kinds of questions—like “Is this act you are contemplating right or wrong?” But in the end, scientific truths match the realities we perceive with our senses. We have built our civilization through the practice of science. We have sent men to the moon. We have launched probes to other worlds. Our populations have skyrocketed because we have access to reliable food sources and health care.

I plan on telling the young Connecticut artists on March 23, 2021 that a new generation of scientists will blossom because they saw fantastic art and read mind-blowing fiction. Those students will see some of that work (including mine) in the Art of Science exhibition at Eastern Connecticut State University from March 17 to April 27, 2021. Perhaps some of those students might be inspired to turn science fiction into science fact some day. I certainly hope they can. 

I hope that testing their ideas in the crucible of the natural world of which they are a part, and finding verifiable answers there, continues to allow human beings to improve rather than diminish their odds for survival.

It does require agreement on what is real, what is fantasy, and what could become real with effort and determination.