In 1921, at the age of 33, the Indian physicist Chandrasekhara Raman visited the Mediterranean Sea, and was captivated by its blue opal sheen. He wondered why the Mediterranean aroused such emotions in him, and began studying the way that light scatters in an effort to solve this puzzle. In 1928 he discovered the "Raman effect," under which vibrating atoms or molecules scatter light and slightly distort wavelengths, and in 1930 received the Nobel Prize for Physics.

　The Frenchmen Auguste Rodin and Eugene Carriere were prominent artists from the 19th to the early 20th century, the former a sculptor and the latter a painter. The two were close, and shared the same philosophy of, and emotions about, beauty. Their common interest was light. The light that enters the eye is constantly changing, and the two spent their lives exploring how to express the emotions this made them feel in three dimensions, i.e. in sculpture, and in two dimensions, i.e. in paintings.

　The human brain is continually receiving various forms of stimulus through such senses as sight, hearing, touch, and smell, but our most important sense is sight. Light therefore subjects us to strong impressions and emotions, and emotion sometimes defines our goals in life. Because of emotion, we experience pleasure, happiness, and devotion. Individuals explore emotion in different ways. If they want to know about light itself they become scientists, if they want to give form to it, they become sculptors, and if they want to express it in pictures, they become painters. In addition, writers, poets, composers-in fact everyone-all explore emotion in their own ways.

　Emotion is the root of both art and science, which enrich society. The Raman effect, the discovery of which can be traced back to the emotions of Raman, became a widely-used analytical tool in engineering, and this resulted in the development of industry. The works of Rodin and Carriere fill us with emotion whenever and wherever they are displayed. (A Rodin and Carriere exhibition held at the Tokyo Museum of Western Art in Ueno, Tokyo this spring attracted more than 100,000 visitors.)

　I don't believe that the ability to feel emotion and excitement, like that possessed by Raman or Rodin, can be taught in college. I think that such ability resides in a person from the time they are a child, in fact from the time they are in their mother's belly, and that it is just a matter of nurturing it.

　For children, every day is filled with mystery, which is why they are always asking "Why?" They ask us questions like "Who's that?" "Why is it dark at night?" "Why do the stars shine?" and "Why do flowers bloom?" Depending on how they respond to such questions, adults can make children happy, make them think, and nurture their curiosity.

　Science can actually be said to have developed in a form much like that of the child asking why. Astronomy was born from people wanting to know why the sun rises in the same place every morning. The early results of such inquiry can be seen today, for example, in the pyramids at Giza in Egypt, which were built 4,500 years ago. The bases of the pyramids are precisely aligned with the points of the compass.

　Such intellectual activity gradually built modern civilization, yet the speed and scale of the changes of the last 100 years far exceed those of the 1,000 to 2,000 years that preceded them. Around 100 years have passed since the Wright brothers made their first flight in 1903 and Einstein published his three "Annus Mirabilis" papers (containing his special theory of relativity, photon hypothesis, and theory of Brownian motion) in 1905. At that time, who could have predicted that we would be where we are today?

　The rapid progress of science has produced numerous ways of answering questions that begin with why and increased the amount of data we have. If we respond to the whys of children, who will comprise the next generation of scientists, by saying, "That's a silly question. The answer's obvious," they will lose their excitement. The talent hidden inside them will never emerge. The lack of interest in science by children has become a big issue, but is really just a symptom of a lack of interest in science by adults. I'd like adults to think carefully about why they have become like this by reflecting objectively on their own pasts.

Kiyoshi Kurokawa(This article first appeared in the November 2006 issue of Nikkei Science. Permission to reproduce it was obtained.)

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