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Passage 1
When I tell people what I do for a living, wisecracking party guests will ask me, “So, as an expert, what came first: the chicken or the egg?” But in my line of work, such a question is not only stupid because it’s unanswerable; it is stupid because it does not matter.
I am an evolutionary biologist. My job is to research and determine how evolution works. Evolution is the process by which different kinds of living things developed and diversified from earlier forms during Earth’s history. The theory was originally posited in Ancient Greece but later articulated more famously by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century. My particular field of study only emerged in the 1930s and 1940s.
Though my evolutionary biologist colleagues study different aspects of evolution, my specific focus is on genetics. I don’t really care about what species emerged and when; I only care about how the transformation occurred. And the transformations in which I am most interested are gene transformations. Genes are carriers of certain characteristics, and they are passed on hereditarily—meaning a parent gives them to his or her children. It is genes that determine, for instance, what color hair you have or whether you have a widow’s peak on your hairline. What fascinates me is how these genes get transferred and why certain traits do and others do not. For example, how did the genes from Canis edwardii spread to Canis rufus, and how did those genes separate to create both the now-extinct dire wolf and today’s gray wolf?
See, to me, it does not matter which wolf came first. It only matters how the wolves evolved. So, the appropriate question to ask me at a party is really “How did the chicken spread its genes into the egg?”
Passage 2
Scientists spend most of their days asking questions. In fact, the most important thing a scientist can do is to formulate a proper question. From the question, all information is derived. Without the question, there is only speculation. That is, without a proper question, we can only guess.
Before the Scientific Revolution, this is essentially what was done. Rather than asking how the planets moved, the thinkers of the day just assumed. Of course the sun revolved around the Earth. After all, the sun seems to move in the sky throughout the day, so that was proof that it moved around the Earth. Obviously, this was flawed thinking. What the thinkers should have done (and eventually did do) is ask how the sun moved. That would have led to a better answer: maybe it was not moving!
Scientists today rely on something called the scientific method. This was formulated in the 16th, and 17th centuries by men like Francis Bacon and René Descartes. Powered by a belief in skepticism, they realized that science too needed to revolve around being skeptical and asking questions. To that end, they outlined the method still used today. In its most basic form, it involves five steps: asking a question, forming a hypothesis or guess, making predictions of outcomes of an experiment, testing the predictions through experimentation, and analyzing the results. See, the question is so important that it is the first step of any experiment!