The Yerkes - Dodson Law

On this Blue Tuesday, we may want to have a look at yet another work performance theory, namely the Yerkes-Dodson law. In its most classical representation, it shows work performance on the Y-axis versus arousal (stress level) on the X-axis. The curve typically has an ‘inverted u’-shape or bell shape. For complex tasks, the stress level tipping point (maximum) typically occurs at lower levels of stress than for simple tasks.

The scope of validity of the Yerkes-Dodson law may be a point of discussion among experts, but we all feel it corresponds to our own experience. We need a little bit of stress to come to good performance – we call this ‘flow’. However, when stress gets too high, we tend to get anxious, superficial, confused and we lose our concentration.

In a certain way this law pleads against additional pressure and against multitasking. Multitasking may be required when individuals need to achieve a certain productivity for the money they are paid. Productivity has become a major concern in labour market policies. Nowadays, you couldn't afford giving an employee a single task, although it could be better for his stress level.  Multitasking increases the complexity of work and increases our stress level. We will inevitably end up on the lower right-hand sides of the curves and show relatively poor work performance. Stress and all related inefficiencies seem to be unavoidable in this valley of tears. It may make sense to spare our colleagues and ourselves from more.

Let us further reflect on the Yerkes-Dodson Law at work and at school.

I refer to my blog: The Disconnected Worker.

Picture: Afbeelding van Enrique Meseguer via Pixabay

Seek for Advice

Life has always been complicated. Sooner or later in their lives, all people ran into situations where they needed some kind of advice. In the old days, you could get this advice from shamans, priests, counsellors, teachers, witches or just from good friends, which was probably the best. The ancient Greeks, if they were wealthy enough, could travel to the oracle of Delphi to get some advice on what to do next.

In our society, seeking for advice looks easy but may not be that easy. A first impediment for seeking advice is our obsession with autonomy and self-reliance. Everybody is very busy appearing autonomous. Asking for advice requires a certain humility. You may need to recognise someone else for his/her specific competence. Even worse, you may discover you got it all wrong to start with. Any kind of advice, whether free or paid, may require a certain gratitude from you. Gratitude is sometimes difficult to convey.

A second impediment for seeking advice maybe the fact that we feel bombarded by advice already. In the good old days, we needed to ask for scarce information; nowadays information is abundant and thrown at us at megabytes per second. As a result, we develop a defensive attitude towards advice. We remain just as helpless as before as we now need to filter out the rare useful information from the information ocean. Therefore, we still need personal advice, more than ever.

Let us think this week on what topics we may need advice. You can't honour your fellow human being more than by asking advice. Saint Paul's advice would be “to put on the new man” or as we say in Dutch “Enrobe yourself with the new man (person)”. (‘Bekleedt u met de nieuwe mens’). Be a brand-new person. Good advice may lead us to a good life and to reinforced friendship.

I refer to my blog Dare to Expect.

Picture: Delphi, Greece, picture taken in 1991 ©Wim Lahaye

International Women in Engineering Day

Every year on June 23, the world celebrates International Women in Engineering Day. I noticed on an old picture there was only one girl in my 30-student thermodynamics class of 1986. The reason I write this blog however, is that people tell me the M/F ratios have not changed that much since, whereas we were all convinced, back in 1986, that things would change soon.

You could ask why this matters. This is a justified question. Why does it matter that one gender is underrepresented in a particular subject or faculty? Couldn’t we just live with that? The classical answer from the point of view of industry/ society, is that some potential is underused: the underrepresented gender may contribute more than it actually does. This ignores the fact that there may be an overrepresented gender, the men. Perhaps the overrepresented gender is contributing inefficiently to the bottom line, assuming that each gender has specific inherent qualities the other gender may have to a lesser extent? There is however another reason why imbalance is bad. An unbalanced ratio may make studying at a particular faculty less attractive for the students themselves either because of too many of your own gender or because of too many of the opposite gender. Gender imbalances may lead to boring study places and boring work places.

As for the causes, I have been reading a lot of articles about this. Most articles spend too much attention on why girls / women don’t study engineering, but they don’t spend sufficient  attention on the boys/ men motivation, as if that doesn’t matter much. Moreover, the articles focus too much on career impediments, like glass ceilings and salary differences. These career impediments equally exist in other professions, so why should there be a bigger problem in engineering? The choice for a scientific or engineering profession is made at secondary school, long before these career differences are actually experienced.

Most articles agree on a few things. There are hidden forces in education which drive boys / girls in divergent directions, and this is not so much related to school orientation, but rather family role related. It is interesting to note that this divergence is worse in industrialised countries. In poorly industrialised countries, men and women are equally forced to look for a job with sufficient revenue, whereas industrialised countries offer the luxury to women to accept somewhat less paid, but stable part-time or 9-5 jobs. As a result, paradoxically, industrialised countries seem to have more imbalance in the M/F engineering participation ratio.

Another finding is the role of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the degree to which you are confident you will be able to solve a difficult task. For technical challenges, girls/women seem to have a lower self-efficacy than men, but the question is whether this low self-efficacy is sufficient ground not to start the studies. Men with low self-efficacy exist as well and are kindly asked to study engineering anyway and suffer the consequences of their lack of self-confidence. “Bite on your teeth!” we say in Dutch. I'm joking a little but our society is tough on men as well.

I’m in favour of general STEM actions to encourage young people in general for science. However, I’m not in favour of girls-only actions, as these may have an adverse effect.

I refer to my blogs: ‘The Engineer’s Social Role’ and to ‘European Young Engineers’.

Afbeelding van Dee via Pixabay

The Engineer’s Social Role

There is a history of the technical marvel IMEC in presentation form. In it, Professor Hugo De Man characterized his closest colleague the late Professor Roger Van Overstraeten as a ‘visionary Fleming’. According to Professor De Man, it had always been the intention "to put Flanders on the map of the industry of the future by training a generation of engineers who, in addition to a solid scientific basis, also have an eye for the social and economic progress of the people."

We did indeed have some professors at our University of Leuven who gave a little more than the sober lessons. On the one hand they tried to teach us a kind of entrepreneurship and on the other hand they reminded us of our social role and our social responsibility. Entrepreneurship was not an end, but rather a means to improve the socio-economic fabric of society and the common good. This may all sound rather obvious, but it never was, on the contrary. Not all colleagues showed the same interest in social themes. Deep specialisation threatened to suck many fellow engineers into the deep oblivion pit of the professional nerds. It didn’t end up that bad, however. The problems to be solved became so complicated that only good teamwork proved to have a chance of success. Furthermore, new developments are now being evaluated very thoroughly in terms of their social relevance. After my studies, at the engineering association and at the European Young Engineers,  I met many like-minded people.

The profession of engineer is indeed a wonderful profession, although it sometimes takes courage. It certainly deserves promotion among the various groups that are still underrepresented in this profession. But the beauty of it all is that I became more and more aware that I did not have a profession but a vocation. In "Science as a vocation" we already saw that this vocation can be described as a kind of apostolate in the industrial landscape.

I also refer to my blogs: "The Why of Technology” and to “The Trap of Technology".

Picture: Brussels Airport Runway, courtesy Jan Straus

Let them be wrong about you

We may embrace the idea of not judging others; this does not immediately free us from the fear of being judged by others. Hans Christian Andersen's story of the ugly duckling reminds us of the fact that we may be excluded, simply based on the fact of being different. Being different makes us vulnerable and vulnerability may end up with injury. In the end, we become our injuries. The fear of being injured in the future may have a paralysing effect on us, even to such an extent that we proclaim a final judgement over us that is worse than the original blame. (Moreover, of all dreadful judges, you are probably the worst one for yourself.)

In the social media, we discover our fellow human beings are often wrong about many things: be it elections, climate or the meaning of woke. Even in academic circles, the reasoning of our fellow human beings is far from straight. The most educated people may end up with totally opposite opinions, depending on how their youth traumas made them look at the world. We may deeply regret this but generally we have no other option than to live with it. If our fellow human beings are wrong so often about so many things, why couldn't they be wrong about us? We do our best in the hope that humanity keeps a nice track record about us. Alas, humanity does not care.

In general, gossip, misunderstanding and stupidity may destroy our reputation in our limited social habitat. It doesn't help to be perfect: don't even try this! Instead, accept it, let it go and allow your fellow human beings to be wrong or at least incomplete about you. You rarely lose anything by allowing that to happen. People say stupid things all the time and they would have been wrong about you anyway! The happy ending is not that you become a swan, but you may feel like one! You win an enormous freedom: the freedom to be and to do what you like. You will no longer be paralysed. This can be a very liberating thought.

I also refer to another Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale: the Emperor's New Clothes.

Picture: from the book Andersens Sprookjesschat, Zuid-Nederlandse Uitgeverij – Antwerpen/Amsterdam 1966

Erasmus Travels Through Europe

14 February is widely known as Saint Valentine’s day. Few people know the church also celebrates Cyril and Methodius, patron saints of Europe on this day. By spreading literacy in East Europe, the two brothers are considered to have brought a serious contribution to the European thought. 

Erasmus of Rotterdam also spread literacy throughout Europe, but he was a bit too sarcastic to reach the holy status of Cyril and Methodius. Yet his name was given to the Erasmus programme for the exchange of university students among European universities. Erasmus stands for “European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students”. It allows students to study one semester in another EU country.

The positive impact is clear. Students get to know other languages. They get acquainted with other cultures in Europe and above all they create unique human relationships with their peers in other university communities in Europe. This also enables exchange of knowledge and skills through fruitful long-term scientific collaboration.

Like all European programmes it also suffers from a few deficits. The opportunity to acquire new language skills is insufficiently exploited. Too many universities have changed their national language master educations into English language master educations. In this way they block too easily the opportunity for foreign students to acquire the local language. Another deficit of the Erasmus programme is the bad ratio between administrative burden and human touch. Candidates need to fill in a lot of forms, however, they get little human attention when they arrive on site.

There is always room for improvement but it is a comforting thought that already millions of students have benefited from this programme and that many more will follow. I refer to my blog Europe, Quo Vadis and to my other blogs about Europe.

Picture 1: Erasmus of Rotterdam 2022©Ingrid Lahaye-Van Hoof

Picture 2: Sankt-Pölten Austria 2023©Elisabeth Lahaye

Education, Culture and Virtue

What is the purpose of education? If you gauge the zeitgeist, you think: "acquire sufficient skills to cope with global competition". That's not entirely wrong, but in "The Paradox of Ambition" we already suggested that that is not the (only) purpose of life. So there has to be more. In "The history of progress", Rutger Bregman already wrote that people did not see this as such in the past. In the past, education had to lead mainly to a virtuous life. Postmodern thinkers will suggest this was a typical vice of Christian education, where a virtuous life equalled a Christian life. But Rutger Bregman notes that original liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville also pleaded for the virtuous life education. Education was to bring Culture with big C and that Culture had to elevate man to a more virtuous life. It should also not be forgotten that virtue, in a society under construction, could indeed lead to a better life, especially when you consider that zeal and perseverance (the "industria" mentioned earlier) were among those virtues. Peter Drucker also mentions integrity, the virtue par excellence, as an important quality for a manager.

But today you are no longer allowed to talk about people upliftment and if you suggest that education should promote virtue, then the contemporary correct thinkers immediately start to grumble: that cannot be true! If, on the other hand, you suggest that education should improve gender equality, combat racial discrimination, and promote respect for all diversity, then everyone will applaud you. But isn't this just virtue? And isn't this virtue linked to the great Western Culture from which we think it has some unique achievements? Everything depends on how you fill in virtue and today we emphasise other things than yesterday. But virtue is necessary for a good society and it is still the best guarantee to be able to cope with global competition. And there is more: virtue is also necessary at school to come to a good study – climate.

I also refer to my blogs: "Confucius inequality ", "Pressure on Kids",  and to "Virtues and virtutes".

Picture: Giovanni Bosco dedicates his life to education - Oud-Heverlee ©Wim Lahaye

Against the Tide

This book is a posthumous anthology of Roger Scruton's writings, edited by Mark Dooley. Roger Scruton was an eminent British conservative thinker. Conservatism in his opinion is the awareness that many of the good things we enjoy now, are actually the fruit of self-sacrifice from our predecessors and therefore they require protection. It is self-evident that in times of change, this protection is highly needed.

The term sacrifice is all too often associated with abuse and exploitation, whereas sacrifice is actually essential to achieve anything worth pursuing. The mainstream press associates conservatism with populism, as this press considers itself progressive. Conservative thinkers like Roger Scruton also emphasise the fact that citizenship involves obligations for the people who reside here. Therefore also the benefits should return to the people who reside here.

By living among freedom fighters in Eastern Europe before 1989, the author became aware of the transforming effect of sacrifice on the human character. He explains the resistance of countries like Poland and Hungary against Europe. European institutions have no soul and their bureaucracy resembles the bureaucracy of the old communist party. Europe, Quo Vadis?

The author rightfully complains about the destructive work of postmodernism (my wording). The spoilt post-war children sneer at our ideals but never understood why we needed them. Truth, virtue and beauty no longer seem to exist. Our society can never degenerate to a point where vice alone has a following. “When we start to celebrate ugliness, we become ugly too”.

Roger Scruton is extremely critical against modern pedagogy. He detests the jargon created by ‘people who can neither write with skill nor read with understanding’. He is not willing to adopt the art of taking offence, the ‘woke’ or witch-hunt culture, which dominates the social media. He doesn't deny the possibility of injustice but he unmasks the sociologists who detect structural violence behind all power exercised, even power that is a legitimate outcome of consent and compromise.

Scruton also asks why holiness has not retained its meaning to us. Christian faith is now covered with ridicule by trivialising materialists and sarcastic cynics but as the author points out: Christian religion exactly teaches us to accept ridicule. The validity of the Christian message can never be affected by what others think or do. Those who read my blogs from time to time, know that this is a central theme for me.

I refer to my blog The Honour of Humiliation and The Chasm between Populists and Academics. Roger Scruton is also one of the thinkers in the Dutch book Denkers van vandaag voor de wereld van morgen.

Bemoaned Benefits of Boredom

How long is it since you experienced boredom? If you are fifty and still at work, I guess it is a very long time ago. You may remember you experienced as a child the endlessness of time and the sadness of not knowing what to do. On the other hand, you may also remember the benefits of boredom: silence, time, quietness and peace of mind.

All this is no longer possible, due to our social web addiction. If by accident, we get a rare spare moment we immediately waste it on our smartphone or computer. In this way we can only get bored by the nonsense of others. This is a sad thing. It is as if we are afraid to discover our true self.

The loss we experience in this way is the loss of the fruits of boredom. The fruits generated by silence, time, quietness and peace of mind. These fruits are curiosity, creativity, erudition, spirituality and patience. These fruits of boredom bring us much closer to our fellow human being than the superficial hyperactivity displayed in postmodern times on the worldwide web.

Let us change something in our lifestyle.

Picture: Knalfestival exposition KU Leuven library ©Wim Lahaye

Ode to Craftsmanship

Knowledge is silver, but skill is gold. In the Middle Ages, new craft brought great wealth to the emerging cities. This is still the case in our current economy. Employers are desperately looking for employees with expertise. Craftsmanship is also beautiful. Gute Technik ist immer schön.

Craftsmanship is valuable because it takes talent, time, patience, discipline, and intrinsic motivation to acquire it. This is precisely what makes craftsmanship so rare: today there is too little time and patience to allow craftsmanship to mature. Due to skilled manpower shortage, young people must show craftsmanship immediately and get discouraged early. Let us revalue craftsmanship.

I refer to my blog: Ode to Industry and The Engineer’s Courageous Mastery.

Picture: shutterstock.com

Tobit's Confidence in the Future

Looking at 17th and 18th century paintings, you will sometimes find the theme of two young men and a dog. One of the young men has wings while the other, on his instruction, dissects a huge fish. It is the beautiful legend of Tobias and Raphael from the book of Tobit of the Old Testament. Tobit, Tobias' father, is a pious, god-fearing man, but he lives in exile, in a world hostile to his religion. Tobit relentlessly does the right thing. At night he buries the dead bodies of his deceased compatriots, although the Babylonians have strictly forbidden this. Tobit continues to do his faithful duty every night, but one day he finds himself in a completely desperate situation. A bird drops faeces on his eyes and Tobit goes completely blind. But Tobit does not lose hope; he has a strong confidence in the future and believes in the repair of the irreparable.

Tobit knows he still owns a treasure, hidden in a faraway land. Tobias has to go get that treasure with the first stranger that looks suitable to him. Tobit believes in divine Providence, and that first best stranger turns out to be a God-appointed archangel named Raphael. Raphael will guide and protect young Tobias on his perilous journey. While blessing his son for his journey, Tobit insists to him on the golden rule: “What you do not want to be done to you, don’t do that to another!”. To my knowledge it is the only place in the Bible where the golden rule is stated explicitly. The story ends well and Tobit is even cured of his blindness (see the beautiful painting by Bernardo Strozzi).

A world that denies God feels cold and hopeless. This story teaches us how we can survive and stay full of hope for a better future. In other words, trusting in God's Providence and in a better future, against all odds, is self-affirming, even when you hit the bottom of the sea. This is the only way to stay steadfast on the thin grey line between the feasible and the unfeasible.

Picture: Renata Sedmakova / Shutterstock.com, painting by J. Van de Kerhove, St.-Jakobskerk, Bruges.

A New Year's Resolution: Stop the Blame Game

If I were to choose a suited collective New Year's resolution, I would choose stopping the eternal blame game in our society. If something bad happens (e.g. a home for the elderly gets infected by Covid-19), the press immediately indicates potential scapegoats. Something few people seem to understand is: in a complex society like ours, things go wrong and it is not necessarily anybody’s fault. As a leading manager in a large organisation, you may be forced to take decisions, the consequences of which you can’t entirely foresee. What happens in the end, may be the result of a complex interaction between different unpredictable events.

When we think of the Middle Ages, where disease was believed to be caused by witches and devils, we tend to think we belong to an enlightened era, where such nonsense could not prevail. Yet if we look at our daily reactions to bad news, we immediately start with the gallows installation. Sin and guilt are considered obsolete remainders of an all too Christian society, yet sin and guilt have never been more at the centre of attention than now. Confession and penitence on the contrary are no longer permitted. Our mediocracy loves hanging the few excellent people in our society who feel accountable.

The truth is we judge too fast. We can’t imagine being in someone else’s position. Therefore, let us practice mildness. Read my Dutch blog: Het principe van de goede huisvader in een technocratie.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

This story, originally written by Washington Irving in the 18th century, is very similar to Rip Van Winkle. It also takes place in the peaceful rural environment of Dutch colonists, in and around early New Amsterdam or New York. It is written in the same colourful English.

The village of Tarry Town or Sleepy Hollow is a place where superstition and mystery are part of daily life. It is notorious for the legend of the headless horseman, sometimes called Major André, a decapitated soldier who is believed to chase people in search of his lost head. The highly educated Ichabod Crane comes from the city and is supposed to bring reason and order in Tarry Town as the local teacher.

Ichabod falls in love with the 18-year old Katrina Van Tassel, the well-rounded daughter of a wealthy Dutch settler. He faces tough competition though, as Brom van Brunt, the local sturdy guy, also wants to court the lovely Katrina. On the dramatic evening when Ichabod asks for the hand of the lovely Katrina, he seems to be turned down and needs to drive home through the area where the headless horseman reigns. When he actually encounters the headless horseman, he rides for his life, and falls from his horse before he can reach the bridge that should have led him to safety. The story has a completely open end. It just describes the scene the next day. Only Ichabod's hat and his saddle remain. Ichabod is never seen again in the area. The scene suggests that Brom van Brunt may have abused Ichabod’s superstition to scare him off for life. (By the way, the 1999 Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, doesn't follow the book 'by the book'.)

The story is a hilarious confrontation between the rational city education and the superstitious country life. This is a personal opinion, but I suspect Irving's character Ichabod is based on an acquaintance of his, perhaps even a political enemy. The 'morale of the story' is not so obvious as in Rip Van Winkle. There is a short epilogue written by Irving in which he denies there is no morale to the story. True or not: there is certainly wisdom at hand. He writes: “He who races with goblin troopers, is likely to have a rough ride.” And “He who …..loses the hand of a Dutch settler's daughter, may enjoy the preferment of the state”. The basic idea is that there is always an advantage at every disadvantage. This is a very Dutch thought...and it makes me happy.

The Pursuit of Attention

In 2019, the pursuit of happiness has become a pursuit of attention. You may have food and clothes, a good health, a house with a garden and some security. If you feel like you don’t receive or ‘deserve’ attention, you will be unhappy. In this time of Beschleunigung and Social Web Addiction, when everybody chases his self-defined goals at 120 km/h and 10Mbit/s, attention has become the most pursued good, the holy grail of happiness.

In the world of politics and media, attention makes and breaks careers. In the world of work, companies no longer need hard-working people or smart people, they need people who spend all their attention to work and it has become a challenge to identify the ones who do. In education, the children have not become lazier or more rebellious, it just has become increasingly difficult to attract their attention, due to the thousands of stimuli and opportunities they need to process each day. We see a lot of kids that are of good will, but they are dropping out because of a lack of attention from their parents and their teachers.

Relationships between friends, partners, parents and children can only be nurtured through mutual attention. Attention is love and love is attention. But attention requires time and energy, so we have to get our priorities right! With this blog, I once again show I’m good in theory. Practice in family life however proves that “we” usually fail towards the ones we love most. It is rare that one regrets not having answered a remark from a remote Facebook friend. After answering a thousand remarks from remote Facebook friends however, we may regret not having paid attention to our partner, our children or our parents. And finally, it can even happen that we don’t pay enough attention to ourselves.

A special kind of paying attention is attentiveness, a very useful virtue in social life. I also refer to my blog: You are your Time

Picture: zijkant Beursgebouw Brussel ©Wim Lahaye

European Young Engineers

European Young Engineers is an association of young engineers associations of different European countries. It is based on a rotation system: every six month one member organisation or member state organises a meeting for European Young Engineers in its home country. The meetings usually consist of professional workshops, company visits, cultural excursions and social happenings. In this way, European Young Engineers get to know each other, and they learn about other countries' companies, technical innovation areas and cultural cities. EYE meetings can be lots of fun but they are also rather demanding on the organisers. Last weekend, I had the honour and the pleasure to speak at the EYE conference in Eindhoven (a great place to be for engineers!).

I was happy to be among the founding members when the Dutch Young Engineers took the initiative to meet the Flemish Young Engineers in Antwerp 25 years ago. Looking back in time, one can identify a number of things that changed since then. EYE was founded only five years after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. We can’t say this European scar has completely disappeared, but a long way has been gone already. We have an integrated market now, and a common European currency for a number of members states. On the technical level, the world has changed as well. The fax has been replaced by the Internet. We have now mobile phones that can do more than one call on a charged battery, and the mobile phone has become a smartphone. We have also seen the emergence of social media since then.

EYE is really a demonstration of positive forces (dunameis) in Europe. On the one hand, the engineering profession is perhaps the profession where international collaboration is most fertile, especially for young engineers. On the other hand, this collaboration is pleasant and it creates lasting relationships. Europe needs courageous vanguard movements like EYE. I’m so glad this initiative continues and flourishes. We had to do this because it was possible. What you can do, you also have to do. I refer to earlier blogs related to Europe.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

On April 9th, 1945, today 74 years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in concentration camp Flossenbürg, only two weeks before its liberation by the U.S. Army.

Some years ago, I bought this small booklet “Worte für jeden Tag”, with quotes and extracts from Bonhoeffer’s work. His writings bear witness to an enormous spiritual strength. It is amazing how a single man could show such individual resistance against a totalitarian system. To overcome the internal doubt and the fear and yet keep following the right path requires a huge faith.

We should not admire Bonhoeffer because of his forlorn fate; his enemies had determined this for him. We should admire him for his spirituality, for being consequent in his resistance against mainstream and his incredible persistence. Even if we can’t condemn people for not having had his strength at that time, the attitude of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the only real weapon against new successful types of barbarism.

Belonging to a protestant church himself, Bonhoeffer somehow unites Christians of all traditions. Many Catholics cherish his words and venerate him like a saint. Let us hope he will at least receive his deserved attention next year, when the end of the war will be 75 years behind us.  Beatus vir qui sperat in eo - Blessed is the man who puts his hope in Him.

I refer to “The Siren Songs of Simplicity” and to my Dutch blogs: “Titus Brandsma” and “Hannah Arendt”.

The Legacy of Stephen Hawking

On March 14^th, 2018, exactly one year ago, the world lost one of the most colourful scientists of the last 50 years. March 14 is also known as π –day and it happened to be the birthday of Albert Einstein.

I’m reading a Stephen Hawking book every decade since 30 years now. Stephen Hawking was not only popular because of the area in which he worked: black holes, theoretical physics and cosmology. He was also popular because he was the most remarkable example of how a man could overcome his handicap and become extremely successful. He also attracted media attention and became popular with the general public, even if few people could really understand his discoveries. Even after having studied the basics of thermodynamics, relativity and quantum mechanics, I have difficulty imagining what could be the meaning of the entropy of a black hole. The late professor ir. Theo Van der Waeteren at KU Leuven could have said: “How amazing the number π pops up in this equation!”. (His former students will understand.)

In his latest book, Stephen Hawking also writes about the great questions of the universe. He suggests the mathematical laws of the universe are such that the universe could have originated from  … nothing. In other words, science no longer needs a prima causa, a first little godly spark to ignite the big bang. Our universe would be some kind of natural unfolding of mathematical equations. He also addresses the future of mankind, such as the environmental problems, the need to travel through space and the emergence of artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation.

What a constructive contribution to society this is! Throughout the different books I have been reading, I could discern some evolution in this rich personality. Our world has become a little smarter and wiser through Stephen Hawking.

Ref: “De erfenis van Hawking” in Karakter 63 by Prof. Thomas Hertog. I also refer to my blogs "Making Science accessible to All" and “Finding Exoplanets”.

Making Science Accessible to All

On December 20^th, 1996, Dr. Carl Sagan passed away after having lived the life of a successful astronomer. Carl Sagan had become a celebrity because of his brilliant television series Cosmos.

Sagan made science accessible and comprehensible to all. I watched his television series Cosmos at the age of 16-17 years, and this opened my mind to science and to the universe in general. Later I read his books Broca’s Brain and the Dragons of Eden. Cosmos was not only about the stars, it also described life on earth and potential life on other planets. It talked about the history of science and of the great discoveries on earth and in the universe.

There is no nobler and more beautiful work than popularising science. Sagan could also raise enthusiasm with his audience. He testified from a certain spirituality of science, something that I still seem to live from today. What is this spirituality of science? It means that we can stand in awe for the cosmos and its beauty. This also includes the inherent beauty of the laws of the cosmos, so we can also stand in awe for science itself.

Sagan did not deny that the Cosmos could not become a threat someday, as the laws of nature can also lead to cataclysms and to the end of humankind. He didn’t deny the inherent timeliness of our presence and the vulnerability of humans on this planet and in the universe. In this space age, science and technology, including space travel, seem to become ordinary commodities. People tend to become cynical and indifferent.

We need more people like Carl Sagan to encourage young people to enter the world of science and to stand in awe for this “Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring”. These were the last words spoken by Sagan in his television series Cosmos, and these words have been resonating in my mind since 36 years now.

I refer to my science blogs among which SETI and Day of Wrath.

What They Don’t Teach At School .. Yet

When you read a title like this on a social web site, you can expect a truckload of cynical advice from people with bad experience and a bad character. This is obviously not the case here.

In fact, school should become less cynical, not more. School tells pupils how to behave, but doesn’t tell them what to do if others don’t behave. As such the strong guys are told that they should not bully the weak, but the weak guys are never told what they should do in case they are bullied. "Go to the teacher or headmaster", is a good advice from the point of view of the adults, but we remember quite well it didn’t work very well in the old days either. The issue is important, because school performance is in my honest opinion, more often affected by lack of a safe study climate than by a lack of intelligence. In her book Dreamers who do, Hilde Helsen mentions three basic skills all children should become familiar with at school:

•  They should teach all children the principles of non-violent communication. Non-violent meaning here: not based on humiliating arguments of power, but based on arguments of perceived behaviour. In the Bible, the fraternal admonition is recommended. You should talk "under four eyes", and if that doesn’t work, you should get one more witness. If that doesn’t work, go to old wise men. The strong should be confronted with their weakness, and the weak should be confronted with their strengths.
• All children should be taught some type of meditation: yoga, mindfulness or transcendental meditation. In the old days, we had prayer. It is now a lost type of meditation because we became too idle and too proud to believe we could need it.
• All children should recognise compassion as a universal human feeling and a universal human value. Compassion is neither an emotion to be ashamed of, nor an obligation that is imposed by one or the other religion.

I guess most schools do something implicitly in one or more of these topics. However, these remain side topics, being done in the margin, during a break. The way schools are organised, suggests these things are less important than the hard topics that determine whether you succeed or fail. I am convinced that you can raise the quality of education more by teaching these soft skills than by raising the bar for the hard topics. I refer to my earlier blogs: “The Importance of Being Gentle”, “Bullying, Indignation is Growing” and “About Meditation - die Schöne Kunst des Innehaltens”.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Many people know this fairy tale from the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Two swindlers succeed in convincing the emperor, his court and the whole country that they made magic clothes for the emperor, clothes which are invisible for stupid, incompetent people. All countrymen are afraid to be unmasked as stupid and stand in awe for the emperor’s new clothes. Except one little boy who was unaware of the magic property of the clothes and shouts in the crowd that the emperor is not wearing any clothes at all.

We may identify ourselves with the cheering people, who turn with the wind when suddenly everybody else does. This is the so-called mainstream. We should identify ourselves with the emperor. No one really escapes from the position of the emperor. Our idleness and fear of appearing stupid continuously blackmail our reason. This doesn’t happen occasionally, it happens continuously. We are forced to live a life of rational denial and self-deceit as we are blackmailed by others on our intellectual capacities. This, in a certain way, tells us something about society as a whole. Our society is trapped in a number of self-constructed paradigms. Some of these paradigms are absolutely foolish. We don’t question them as we don’t want to be considered a fool. How can we get rid of these paradigms? We need to listen to ignorant little boys and girls.

Let me give some examples of foolish paradigms. We all believe that working from nine to five is actually a smart thing to do. We drive ourselves, always at the same time into massive traffic jams. Is that so smart? All these office jobs, are they really so meaningful that we all have to be there at the same time? Is it really needed that we all drive hundreds of kilometres, daily, alone, crossing thousands of people who do the same in the opposite direction? When vacation time starts, we drive ourselves into traffic jams on the highways to the south, every year again. Is that a smart thing to do? Or we take the plane and spend our precious free time in front of security gates at the airport? I want to be the little boy who says this is not smart.

The Emperor’s New Clothes  was wonderfully narrated and sung by Danny Kay in his movie Hans Christian Andersen and it was recorded for eternity on this wonderful vinyl record, which I remember so well from my childhood. Enjoy the song.

Picture: from the book Andersens Sprookjesschat, Zuid-Nederlandse Uitgeverij – Antwerpen/Amsterdam 1966