• Question: Is science the most important subject

    Asked by anon-185147 to William, Rebecca, Martyna, Callum, Alice, Adam on 7 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Rebecca Roddan

      Rebecca Roddan answered on 7 Nov 2018:


      I wouldn’t say so. I think all subjects are important and have their own role in society. How sad would it be if no-onene painted anything, or made music or knew anything about history and the people who lived before us?

    • Photo: Adam Berlie

      Adam Berlie answered on 8 Nov 2018:


      This is a strongly polarising question, but i would be inclined to say yes. Don’t get me wrong, the arts and humanitites subjects are very important, one thing to bear in mind is that most advances in society occur through scientific discoveries. Scientific advancements also can lead to evolution within the arts. Think of things like photography, when scientists first discovered you could capture images on film! Or who designed one of the many different musical instruments that are around today. I went to a very interesting talk once at a big physics conference where someone was talking about colour theories and how artists had started using optics and lenses to get the correct perspective on thier painitings. Had it have not been for the development of these lenses and understand how they work, the artists would not have evolved! It’s important to remember that most of the things we take for granted in society have come from scientific discoveries; like the internet, your phone, you Nintendo Switch or even those antibiotics that you take to make you better when you’re ill!

    • Photo: William Glass

      William Glass answered on 8 Nov 2018:


      That’s a great question. I think an important distinction to make is what we mean by important. Science certainly is important to discover how the world around us works and it drives innovation. I believe that we are all scientists at heart and I love the fact that people are interested, driven and talented at many different things that may or may not be the traditional sciences. What may be important to you and I could be completely unimportant to someone else – history, music, culture etc are all important but important for different reasons.

      The arts and humanities may borrow things from science to aid their work and similarly I think we as scientists should not dismiss the arts / humanities, instead I think we should all be looking to borrow ideas from one another to make both our fields richer.

    • Photo: Callum McHugh

      Callum McHugh answered on 8 Nov 2018:


      Some great answers to your question.

      For me, science isn’t the most important subject at all. We can all learn from each other and the disciplines that we choose to study and work within. So many of our ideas and theories are complimentary across the subject boundaries.

    • Photo: Martyna Pastok

      Martyna Pastok answered on 8 Nov 2018:


      I do not think any topic at school is more or less important, all of them are in a way to teach you to understand what is happening around you. Do what you are good at and what you enjoy doing. I like the idea of taking everything as a whole to have a proper complimentary approach. I think the most important skill is to be able to read and understand well what you are reading. Then you can read about whatever interests you at particular time as interests can change and evolve in time 🙂

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