Compilation
Introduction
On October 26, the 2019 World Young Scientists Summit was held in Wenzhou, Zhejiang.
Shi Yigong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of West Lake University, delivered a keynote report titled "Youth and Scientific Spirit".
In the report, Shi Yigong explained the connotation of scientific spirit from three perspectives, namely: truth-seeking, independence and cooperation, and questioning.
He also mentioned that the so-called scientific spirit is to radiate the scientific spirit to the public’s ideas through words and deeds, nourish the public’s thinking, and internalize the public’s behavior; making scientific and technological work an attractive job and becoming a Everyone respects the professions they aspire to and encourages more people to devote themselves to science.
For young scientists, Shi Yigong called on the scientific spirit to be spread by the whole society, and the most important thing is to be spread by our young scientists.
Picture source: West Lake University Photography/Zhu Danyang
The following is the full text of Shi Yigong’s report:
Thank you very much for the host’s introduction. Next I want to give a speech in Chinese.
The title of this speech is "Youth and Scientific Spirit".
What I would like to introduce to you today are some of my thoughts on the scientific spirit.
First of all, what is scientific spirit?
I quote a passage from Einstein here.
He said that the real raising of a scientific problem is the key, not the solution of the problem, because the raising of the problem, including the re-description and brand-new description of an old scientific problem, is the real answer to the world. contribution.
So, the first point I want to make is that the scientific spirit is truth seeking, which is called truth seeking in English, which means seeking truth from facts.
The truth-seeking discussed here is not simply right or wrong, but the pursuit of truth and exploration at the forefront of human knowledge.
Scientific spirit also includes independence and cooperation.
These two seem to be contradictory, but in fact they are completely unified. The so-called independence means that any important scientific discovery often comes from a few people, or even an individual or one person.
These people often go through some hardships in the process of making major scientific discoveries, and often encounter some different opinions. They must stick to their own opinions in order to succeed in the end, so we need to think independently.
But the development of science often requires everyone to work together.
This kind of cooperation is not limited to cooperation within the team, but also relies on cooperation between teams, and even cross-era and cross-industry cooperation.
Let me give you an example, that is the discovery of X-rays.
In 1895, the Dutch scientist Mr. Roentgen discovered the penetrating power of X-rays, which eventually brought powerful applications in medicine. But Roentgen did not discover that X-rays could be diffracted, a phenomenon discovered by German scientist Laue in the last century.
After Laue discovered diffraction, he did not realize that X-rays could also help us clearly analyze the structure of matter. This discovery was made by the British physicists Bragg and his son in 1913. They worked together as father and son to deduce the famous Prague formula.
Such a formula is finally applied to the analysis of our molecular structure, allowing us to peek into the mysteries of life.
The four of them won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901, 1914 and 1915 respectively.
The cross-era cooperation between them has pushed the entire human civilization a big step forward, so the scientific spirit is also the spirit of cooperation.
Of course, the most important scientific spirit is critical thinking, that is, questioning.
Amidst this questioning, we continue to collide with ideas, continue to improve and improve, continue to deepen cooperation, and finally promote the development of science. From Copernicus's heliocentrism to Darwin's theory of evolution, they were all very typical questions that ultimately led to major scientific progress.
In the second part, I will briefly talk about why we need the scientific spirit more in today's world.
Looking at past history, we can conclude a simple rule, that is, the emergence and development of any emerging industry often relies on the innovation of a core technology.
Any innovation in core technology, without exception, originates from the breakthrough of a major original scientific theory at the beginning, which is the original scientific discovery, and the original scientific discovery completely relies on the scientific spirit and scientific method. .
So to summarize some of the major discoveries and industrial revolutions since the Industrial Revolution, from textiles, railways, automobiles, computers to biotechnology, their sources are all major theoretical innovations.
After a gestation period of thirty to forty years, it entered widespread application and exponential growth, bringing a lot of benefits to human society and finally improving our living environment and space.
As you can imagine, without electromagnetic theory, there would be no wireless communications today; without the discovery of microorganisms, there would be no vaccines today; without Newton’s three laws, there would be no aerospace. The vehicle takes off.
Let me give you a small example from my field, which is gene sequencing. In fact, gene sequencing technology has been widely used in clinical practice and can be said to be a typical method and representative of precision medicine.
Of course, the entire gene sequencing is done using a sequencer, and the sequencer was invented by a scientist named Rothberg.
The discovery of the sequencer came from the discovery of sequencing technology. Sanger, the first proposer of sequencing technology, was also the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
If we trace the origin further, the reason why we can sequence genes is because the DNA double helix is ??a non-valent binding, so it can be opened, sequenced, and copied.
This discovery was jointly discovered by James Watson, Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin in the 1950s.
So what I want to say is that the entire process of gene sequencing discovery is also a kind of cooperation and a manifestation of the most original scientific spirit.
Here, in the face of so many outstanding young scientists, I especially want to say that in fact, the scientific spirit depends on the whole society to spread, and the most important thing is to rely on our young scientists to spread it.
I would like to mention one person in particular, Mr. Liang Qichao, who is a famous thinker, educator and politician in modern China.
At the beginning of the last century, he connected the scientific spirit with Chinese culture. He described science and scientific spirit like this - "Systematic true knowledge is called science."
Don’t forget that he particularly emphasized true knowledge, which is the frontier of innovation.
Liang Qichao went on to say: "The method that can teach people to obtain systematic and true knowledge is called scientific spirit." You can understand that this is an attitude and a method, which is scientific spirit.
Inspired by Mr. Liang Qichao, we can think of it this way:
The so-called scientific spirit is to radiate the scientific spirit to the public’s ideas through words and deeds, nourish the public’s thoughts, and internalize the public behavior; make scientific and technological work an attractive job and a career that everyone respects and yearns for, and encourage more people to devote themselves to scientific undertakings; hope to strive to achieve forward-looking basic research and make leading original results and major breakthroughs, Make the Chinese nation’s due contribution to human civilization.
Finally, I am from West Lake University. I would like to briefly introduce to you how, inspired by the scientific spirit and relying on creative and creative young scientists, we can open a door for mankind to make great strides forward. The gateway to scientific innovation—Westlake University.
Westlake University is a new type of university organized by social forces and supported by the state. It is a research university.
At the beginning of the founding of the school, we set the founding philosophy of being small but precise, with a high starting point, and research-oriented; the philosophy of school management is very clear. We proposed that professors conduct research, administration governs the school, and academic orientation determines administration. Serve.
In other words, professors spend their time on academic research and teaching, and administrative staff do routine work, but professors ultimately manage the school by formulating rules rather than directly participating in routine work. amidst the complexity.
Under the guidance of such a school governance philosophy, in the past two and a half years, we have selected 105 outstanding young scientists and senior scientists from more than 8,000 applicants from around the world. Leading the world in their respective fields.
90% of them are under 45 years old, and 80% are under 40 years old. It can be said that they are basically young scientists.
At West Lake University, we are divided into three colleges: the College of Engineering, the College of Science, and the College of Life Sciences. We use interdisciplinary methods to establish growth points in interdisciplinary areas.
By creating a first-class scientific research platform, we will support everyone’s whimsical and innovative thinking.
We have our own brand-new science and technology evaluation system, and we have our own creative practices that respect academic freedom, including academic crossover luncheons. Especially our News & Ideas, an academic exchange that looks to the future and only talks about science and technology in the next five to ten years, has become a common practice at Westlake University.
I believe that inspired by the scientific spirit and with such a large number of young people taking the lead at Westlake University, we will be able to join hands with young scientists from all over the world and scientists and engineers who are dedicated to the scientific spirit. Create the best future for mankind!
Cooperation matters:
Contribution matters:
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