Derek Tickner
© 2009 Derek Tickner
Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
Derek Tickner talks with the good doctor about science, death, God
and surfing.
Dr Karl Kruszelnicki is Australia’s most popular scientist, with a gift for sharing his enthusiasm for learning and explaining complex ideas simply. When he started studying at university he had no career in mind: he did Maths because he was OK at it in school.
Dr Karl doesn’t see himself as a specialist in any area, more of an all rounder.
He now holds four degrees, including medicine and surgery, and he has studied several
non-
Dr Karl is famous for his answers to obscure science based questions on Triple J on Thursday mornings and is a science reporter on a variety of TV shows. He’s the author of 23 books, his latest being Great Myth Conceptions. This very readable book takes short grabs on science, and answers such questions as ‘Is the toilet seat cleaner than the office desk?’ and ‘Does a soul weigh 21 grams at the time of death?’
Good morning, Dr Karl, I’m from Entropy magazine…
What a fine name for a magazine. S = k log W is the correct scientific formula for entropy, I believe.
Err… probably. So… You’re the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at Sydney University. What does that involve?
A Fellow is a very cushy job, I’m like a lecturer who doesn’t have to do anything. I’m promoting science. It’s not just for science though. I feel I’ve done my work when people say, “I’ve been following your stuff for years, I’ve been inspired by it, now I’ve gone and become a nurse, or a carpenter, or an electrician, or I’ve finished high school, or I’ve gone to TAFE to study.” My work is done when I inspire someone to change their career and use their brain.
In your books and on radio you have the gift of making your enthusiasm for science contagious. Do you consciously work on your writing style?
The way I manage to fool people into thinking I’m a writer is that I pick really good content material. Then I follow the simple rule of ‘one sentence, one concept’, keeping the sentences short. And I try to finish with a joke.
And are your academic papers in a similar plain and entertaining style?
Oh yeah, I’ve written one major thesis, which was the designing and building a machine to pick up electrical signals off the human retina. And I’ve written a few papers when I was doing medicine, and I’ve always followed the one sentence, one concept rule. Everyone says they’re straightforward and easy to understand. Other people do things like write in the passive voice all the way through scientific papers. Give me a break! Nobody ever speaks in the passive voice. “A walk was taken by me and Derek through the park.” No! “Derek and I went for a walk through the park!” I write simply and plainly, and it seems to work.
Do you think such science fiction fantasies as time travel or ‘Beam me up Scotty’ type teleportation will be possible in the future?
Science is going to crack a lot of stuff. There are four forces in the universe: gravity, electromagnetic and the strong and the weak nuclear forces. We’ve progressed enormously over the last two hundred years with the electromagnetic force. We are still at an early stage of ignorance with the strong, weak and gravity forces. Time travel might be a fundamental impossibility, we don’t know, people argue backwards and forwards every couple of years. But I do know that the stuff that we’ve got today will look like a kid playing in the dirt with a stick compared to stuff that will be around next century.
You’re a man of science. Are science and religion compatible today?
I think that they are different and they’re compatible. Science depends on truth,
religion depends on faith -
Do you have a spiritual side to your nature?
I believe that people are basically good, if left to their own devices. I can’t prove it. I don’t belong to any organised church. If I belonged to a church, it would be The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, where God just set the universe rolling and said ‘OK guys, you’re on your own, see you later.’
Maybe God is a scientist running a huge experiment to see what happens?
Maybe. But I find it hard to believe that when you have fifteen million children dying each year for no good reason, that there’s a God who cares about us. I can easily believe in a God who doesn’t give a stuff. He’s just sitting back saying, “Well, my job was to build it, you have to run it. It’s you that have to make it a nice place. When you die I’ll tell you how you stuffed it up.”
What do you make of near death experiences?
It’s genuine for people who’ve experienced it. Or rather they remember what they’ve experienced. Have they got any objective proof of it? Zero. Is it real? Yes. Proof that there’s something on the other side? No. There are also people who simply pass out and they don’t have that experience. Does that mean that their experience negates the other one? It’s just different ways of the brain going out to lunch.
Have you any beliefs of what happens to us after we die?
I don’t know, I guess it’s just a cessation, you switch off and it’s gone. There’s no way of knowing what actually happens. We still have this great mystery. What is consciousness and where does it happen? Does it happen in the brain, or rather are we surrounded by our consciousness and we tap into it? Is our brain is just the switchboard and the local host as well? We’re stuck with: ‘We don’t know’. I’m ignorant of the answer, because I haven’t been lucky enough to go over to the other side and come back again!
Is there any research being done in this area?
Paul Davies, who I cheerfully admit is much smarter than I am, believes that there is a link between spirituality and science. I, and I could well be wrong, don’t think so. It falls into the category of ‘not enough information to tell’.
Where to from here? With all your degrees and public profile, you could pick any job or project you choose?
I wouldn’t go back into academia. Basically I’ll continue the way I am now, with the added challenge of learning how to surf. I’ve been able to stand for a few seconds at a time, I’m learning at Maroubra Beach in Sydney. It’s bigger and more dangerous than Bondi.
I was able to learn on the more mellow waves at our local break at Middleton.
Oh man, I like big mellow waves! I don’t want big waves that dump you and break your board. I don’t find any attraction in that at all!
