Posts
 |
| Mohamed Noor sits in the captain’s chair at the Starbase Indy “Star Trek” convention in Indianapolis, Ind., in November 2017. Noor, a biology professor at Duke University, recently authored the book “Live Long And Evolve.” Photo: Savannah O'Connor |
It’s those kinds of questions that Mohamed Noor, a biology professor at Duke University, is asking by using science fiction to motivate people to learn more about science. Noor has taken his message wider with his recently published book, “Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us About Evolution, Genetics And Life On Other Worlds.”
“There are a lot of science-fiction fans out there,” Noor said in an interview. “A lot of these science-fiction fans are interested in science, but maybe they haven’t been engaged by their standard biology classes or even by nature shows and things like that.
“The objective, both from some of the classes I teach as well as my book which just came out, ‘Live Long and Evolve,’ is to try to catch people who already have an interest in science fiction and show them a lot of the real science they can learn from using the science fiction.”...
Noor, 47, is an award-winning scientist in evolutionary genetics who will become dean of natural sciences at Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts and Sciences in July. He lives in Durham after having joined Duke in 2005.
But Noor is also a lifelong “Star Trek” fan who drew inspiration from a 2014 panel discussion at Dragon Con, a sci-fi convention that brings 80,000 fans to Atlanta each September...
Noor and Spana have gone on to speak at panels together on topics such as “Star Trek” vs. “Star Wars.” So when Duke asked Noor about teaching an accessible but educational weeklong course during spring break, he approached Spana to teach it with him.
The result has been “The Biology of Popular Science
Fiction TV and Movies,” where Noor and Spana have for the last two
spring breaks put students to the test trying to think of plausible
explanations for some of the implausible things seen on screen
“The point of the class and the point of the book is not to critique science fiction,” Noor said. “We know that this is fiction. Obviously what’s happening here would not happen in real life
“The point is just to have an entry point to hypothesis testing and to exploring questions and learning what could make something possible.”
Read more... “The point of the class and the point of the book is not to critique science fiction,” Noor said. “We know that this is fiction. Obviously what’s happening here would not happen in real life
“The point is just to have an entry point to hypothesis testing and to exploring questions and learning what could make something possible.”
Related link
 |
| Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds |
