Enchanting Science

Science isn't the dry discipline they taught me in classrooms. Science is A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking which inspired me so much that I found myself xeroxing copies of Hawking's academic papers to take back to read in my dorm room. Science is that beautiful moment when the writings of Richard Dawkins helped me really understand evolution by natural selection, leading me to watch three straight hours of college biology lectures just for my own enjoyment. Science is photographing a plant on a hike through the neighborhood and spending an hour scouring the Internet trying to figure out it's name.

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living...

(Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow)