While eminent scientific organizations such as the Royal Society have been around since the 1600s, many Caribbean countries only gained their independence within the last 100 years. So what does this mean for scientific and technical discourse and development within the Caribbean? Furthermore what are the platforms to enable this to develop within the region?
In my first full time job, at the age of 19, I was presented with the book “Scientists must write”. I also discovered, on one of the shelves of the work library, a book on modelling ocean currents, in which I was introduced to the Navier-Stokes equations, but that’s a story for another day.
Looking back on it, those books and that job had a significant influence on my education and professional career. “Scientists must write” in particular had a profound influence on me, because it made me ask myself a question: Why must scientists write? This was not something we were taught at school and not something I had thought of before then. I should point out that this was before I had attended university, but even after university I do not believe that many technical university graduates believe they should write or think about writing.
Why must scientists write?
The answer I came up with was not that scientists should write specifically, but that they should communicate their ideas and findings. If you ask yourself this question, I’m sure you could come up with many other good reasons why scientists should write.
In today’s society, there are many mechanisms and media to communicate and disseminate information. So while we can write, we can also create videos, podcasts or simply meet up with like-minded individuals (both in the real and virtual world) to discuss topics of interest to us. This goes back to the ideals of the first learned societies.
While the book was named “Scientists must write” this is not a concept specific to scientists.This article was meant to elicit, from you the reader, thoughts and ideas on the platforms required to encourage discussion about the development of science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) within the Caribbean.
With respect to platforms required to encourage discussion in the STEM subjects, my first job proved to be a very rare opportunity in the environment in which I lived and was brought up in St. Lucia. In that first role, my immediate line manager held a doctorate in Chemistry and I worked with scientists in specialities such as Marine Biology, Microbiology, etc. This environment introduced me to working as part of a larger technical team where I was given significant autonomy, while being expected to communicate the results of my experiments to a fairly multi-disciplinary team.
This relates to two ideas. How do we create:
(1) an environment which fosters scientific and technical thinking
(2) the possibility for scientists and engineers to communicate clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences?
Older and more technically developed societies have a range of institutions and organizations, which enable the dissemination of information, provide resources and develop policy on a wide range of technical and scientific issues. Many of these institutions were not formed by governments. They were formed by like-minded individuals coming together with specific interests.
So I leave you with two questions.
What types of forums should there be for science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the Caribbean and what can we do to realise them?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Nicholas St. Hill
Nicholas St. Hill is an engineer with over 20 years research and development experience who runs KEIKY, a company specializing in the areas of instrument and sensor modelling and design. He is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (2009) and a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (2010).
Published: 2017-09-18
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