A Modest Proposal: All Big Thinkers Must Blog

A Modest Proposal: All Big Thinkers Must Blog

And blog now.

Does every scientist blog yet? I would think they would want to, after all, scientists love ideas, and are truth-searchers by nature. But yet, when you speak to scientists, they are often hesitant to express opinion or speculation, as they are adherents to the scientific method and bound to the observable.

But scientists are led by belief, if at best by only the canons of science. So it is only a convenient assumption to say that scientists are bound by objectivity, and it doesn't say anything about the value of speculation brought forth by a scientist. Isn't it better to hear grand pronouncements by someone who has studied the topic, rather than an amateur who has no evidence to support their theories?

So perhaps scientists might be hesitant to blog, per se. But in the right context, I am sure that even the most conservative scientist could add something of value to the global conversation.

Witness Edge: THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2003. Hundreds of concise entries on broad, sweeping questions covering many areas of human knowledge.

It strikes me that the web doesn't allow, it DEMANDS, a concise, layman's approach to writing. If the audience is broad, broadly-appealing language must be used. The web audience is also not bound to a topic or entry like one is bound to a book. A paper published in a medical journal can afford to challenge the attention-span of its readers. A blog-style post must get its point across quickly, without requiring much additional background. Hyperlinks can be exploited to add reference material for fact-checking or further detail. The casual style also signals to readers that content is to be understood as speculative writing.

It is a new medium that scientists will exploit for sharing ideas, across disciplines and with amateurs.