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Research in our life
By A. V. Leontovich
Research is strictly connected with science in our minds. Every child knows, that there are such special people, called scientists, who are carrying out experimental and research work in their silent laboratories, using expensive and sophisticated devices. But let us think, if it is only scientists who are engaged in the research? Maybe all people tend to research and investigate the world surrounding us? Maybe even we do it?
So what is a research? We can learn about it from the word itself. The word «research» comes from the word «search». So what are we searching for? What tracks are we eager to find?
Lets look around. Everything that surrounds us are those tracks, tracks made by very different events. The print in this book is the track of the matrix that made a print on the paper. There is snow outside — thats the track of a cyclone that passed. There are tracks that are less easily detected — a rut, overgrown with grass, a track of a car passing there long, long ago. Or maybe your memory of a film that you watched yesterday — a track in your mind, too…There are some tracks which can be detected only if you use special devices, and there are tracks of the events which were so minuscule or so bygone, that you wont see them nor with your eyes, neither with any devices or machines. There are tracks which are hardly perceptible, and there are tracks which are far bigger than the events that caused them — for example, catastrophes. The result or the track of a hardly noticeable crack in the rail is a train crash. The result of clumsy politics is an armed conflict.
All those are tracks. If we develop our ability to notice tracks, to compare them, to collect them as data, to make conclusions, we train our ability to research or a research mind.
People deal a lot with planning nowadays — in politics, in business, in science, too. Every state is planning its development. A firm is planning how to increase the profit. Very often they dont think about the means that they use to obtain their goal., they harm the nature, they harm other people. The most destructive kind of a plan is the war, which is pitiless to the peoples life, to the nature, to the material values. Those who only plan dont tend to watching and observing, to thinking over various results of their plans. Thats why research should take more place in peoples minds. When we are researching, we dont throw away «useless» facts, choosing only «useful» ones, we collect all the data, which we can collect, we compare them, analyze them, getting them into systems, because we want to know the truth. We think that it is the main role of a person — to be eager to know the truth. If truth is valuable, we can withstand such popular quasi values as money and well-being (we surely see their importance but only as means to getting something).
We dont advice anybody to refuse planning, planning new roads, aircraft, computers. But our idea is that if you want to plan something you are to become a researcher at first so as be able to analyze the meaning of a plan and its possible results. Frankly speaking, there is only enormous pride in the background of many of our plans and they are not necessary at all, because they can cause negative results. We hope, that our young participants wont create hasty plans causing catastrophes, as they would learn how to research.
Very often people pass tracks by, thinking that they are a necessary attribute of their surroundings, or use them if they need them and no more. But there are other people — and they prevail among scientists
— who can perceive tracks of causes in everyday objects. And you neednt be a scientist to learn to do it. Lets remember a wise old village woman, who will understand you from her first sight and perceive your secret reasons and thoughts. We had such experience in our folklore expeditions and we would wonder how and why she could have known all that. Nothing supernatural in this, however, the old woman is a kind of a researcher — she knows how to watch, to analyze, to compare and to draw conclusions.
Research needs a special type of perception of the world which surrounds us, a type that can help us to understand the inner sense concealed in an event, connections, lying in its background. A person is thinking like that:
«What is it? How interesting! And so unusual» — the surprise makes him see a commonplace thing from a different point of view.
«Let me watch. What is unusual, what is interesting?» — the observation which let him choose distinctive or characteristic traits of an event.
«Aha, those are results of my observations — now I can think them over.»
«Eureka! Ive got it!»
«Now I should tell other people about it — or to write about it».
This order of thoughts is the same for a scholar or for a child, too. They are equal in their perception — only the scholar has a larger amount of knowledge.
And so what is science in all this, you can ask. If all the people tend to research, everybody can become a researcher! But thats not so simple in fact. If you dont use the experience of all the humanity, you can become a smatterer or an ignoramus. Science has elaborated standards of a research, and it took time and sometimes even lives of generations of scientists. Only if we take these standards into account, we can be protected against banalities, errors and illusions.
What are those standards? We would like our young participants of the science fair to master some of those standards. Thus the Truth is born only when people are communicating freely and mutually, when they are truly interested in their ideas and the results of their research. A researcher should use the achievements of his predecessors, their methods. Practice is the main criterion that can prove if the conclusions are accurate or not.
And the last. We see that many scientists showed us how to serve ones purpose, we consider them to be great patriots of their country, we honor their high moral principles, their public spirit, we esteem their having laid foundations of our national culture. As we address to their inheritance, we learn to work to be firm of purpose and to uphold our principles for the Truths sake. So any research is connected with the names of great scientists, as it is always connected with the name of your own tutor, may it be not famous, with the name of a person who patiently helps a young author to enter the beautiful world of Research.
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