Ben Miller on science

I have long enjoyed the comedy of Ben Miller who once attempted a Ph.D. in quantum physics. The following is a transcript of him chatting to Brian Cox on BBC Radio 4s irreverent science programme ‘The Infinite Monkey Cage‘ (transcript starts just after the 24th minute).

BC: Ben what was it that captured your imagination initially and turned you into a scientist at school?
BM: What I really liked about science was the fact you didn’t need to know anything. You know I really liked the fact that in the arts there was all this stuff to remember, there were all these dates, there were all these quotations, there was all this incredibly time consuming stuff but that in science there was a kind of purity. You know which was if you were listening and you could understand the idea then you had something that you would then have forever. You didn’t ever then need to do any more work, laziness basically. You didn’t ever then need to do any more work because you kind of understood the fundamental of the theory and then the fun was then you could apply that in any different situation. You know once you understood the general principle then you just simply applied the boundary conditions in whatever different example it was and out would pop the answers. It just completely fascinated me that our brains worked like that. That once you understood a principle it was kind of job done, you know, move on, you could then apply it.

And you could also question the teacher and there was no authority in the room because once you understood the theory you could argue with the teacher and you could say ‘well surely, hang on, you know, if it’s based on an inverse square law then surely x… and how can that be right?’. And there was an equal authority in the room as well and I always quite enjoyed that as well.

As an engineer that makes perfect sense to me. It also makes perfect sense to me as a fencer. But most importantly, as this is a tango blog, it describes tango, and how I dance it, to a T. Why I have absolutely no interest in learning long complicated sequences. It shows why George Bernard Shaw was able to describe tango as “the only discoverable dance”. It explains Ricardo Vidort’s claim that people only needed eight classes with him to learn tango. Once you know the fundamentals the rest is opportunity and variation. And it implies that there are no tango-gods to hand down sequences to you inscribed on stone tablets. There is only you, your partner, the embrace, and the music.