Teaching and writing, to me, is really just seduction; you go to where people are and you find something that they're interested in and you try and use that to convince them that they should be interested in what you have to say.
Interpretation
Teaching is about engaging others by connecting with their interests.
In this quote, Lawrence M. Krauss likens teaching and writing to the art of seduction, emphasizing the importance of understanding the audience's interests and using that insight to draw them into a conversation or idea. By identifying what others are captivated by, one can effectively persuade and inspire them to explore new concepts or viewpoints.
In practice
During a teacher training session, one might use this quote to illustrate effective teaching strategies.
The one experience that I hope every student has at some point in their lives is to have some belief you profoundly, deeply hold, proved to be wrong because that is the most eye-opening experience you can have, and as a scientist, to me, is the most exciting experience I can ever have.
If our species is to survive, our future will probably require outposts beyond our own planet.
The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false.
To the extent that we even understand string theory, it may imply a massive number of possible different universes with different laws of physics in each universe, and there may be no way of distinguishing between them or saying why the laws of physics are the way they are. And if I can predict anything, then I haven't explained anything.
The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.
Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor. That was my great crime, I talked in school.
It is the function of a liberal university not to give right answers, but to ask right questions.
The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.
The student who uses home made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust and which he dares not take to pieces.
Education fails unless the Three R's at one end of the school spectrum lead ultimately to the Four P's at the other-Preparati on for Earning, Preparation for Living, Preparation for Understanding, Preparation for Participation in the problems involved in the making of a better world.
It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.