You may have realized (or not) that science is threatened in this country, the US have the best scientists in the world but science education is a disaster. Do you know that 46% of Americans still believe that God created humans in their present form during the last 10,000 years, even when they are presented 2 million-year-old hominid fossils? I know it too well as, when I teach evolution, I come to the sad realization that many people are still creationists and aren’t open to scientific ideas. I blame religions and obscurantism, but this is another story. Education is the key as many surveys show that people with postgraduate education are the ones most likely to accept evolution and other progressive ideas. And this hasn’t really changed for several decades, what we are doing right now is not working and scientific knowledge needs to be spread with some better tools.
The Symphony of Science is precisely trying to do this, as this project, created by Washington-based electronic musician John Boswell aka melodysheep, seeks to ‘spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through musical remixes’. The concept is that of a remix, except that the track is not a song but a lecture or a sample of a documentary.
Boswell, who is passionate about music and science, uses samples from television programs such as Cosmos, The Universe, The Eyes of Nye, The Elegant Universe and Stephen Hawking’s Universe, featuring popular scientists and educators such as theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, astrophysicists Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking, science guy Bill Nye, famous biology evolutionist Richard Dawkins, naturalist David Attenborough,… he then remixes them with uplifting and exciting music in order to bring ‘a meaningful message to listeners’.
Combining music and science is a wonderful idea and his videos have already attracted 30 million views online, he even caught Jack White’s attention, so that Boswell’s first single, ‘A Glorious Dawn’ was released on Third Man Records for the 75th anniversary of the birth of Carl Sagan on November 2009; two compilation albums ‘Best Of Symphony of Science’ and ‘Collector’s Edition’ have also been released.
With titles like ‘We are all connected’, ‘We Are Star Dust’, ‘Ode to the Brain’, ‘The Quantum World’ and scientifically accurate lyrics, the tracks turn scientists into rock stars. Wild Flag woman Carrie Brownstein even made The Symphony of Science the subject of one of her column for NPR. She wrote: ‘One of my favorite parts of the ‘We Are All Connected’ video is how Bill Nye’s enthusiastic gesticulating — coupled with the camera angle — perfectly emulates certain hip-hop stylings. Once you get past the nerd factor of it all, The Symphony of Science’s concept is really quite beautiful and amazing in both its sincerity and aims.’
I am not a fan of autotune (and there is a lot of that in these ‘songs’), but I must admit that a video like the one below featuring Attenborough, Dawkins, Bill Nye talking about evolution, natural selection and DNA, may effectively attract the attention in a classroom.