Thank you President Sample, Board of Trustees, faculty, administrators, friends and relatives of USC, and most of all, everyone with whom I have the honor of graduating -- good morning.
My particular choice of degree programs, Physics and Japanese, has inspired people to ask me all sorts of questions; but by far the most common one is, "Why such a strange combination?" My usual answer is that I am just a rather strange person who happens to be interested in two widely different fields, but I have a deeper reason -- a drive to combine disparate ways of thinking.
Why is this blending important to me? My first lesson on this came in fifth grade, shortly after I moved to northern Virginia from Australia. I had received a computer for my birthday and had discovered the challenge of text adventure games; and since I hadn't yet made many friends, I spent hours each day and solved a good number of these games. There was one in particular which consistently stumped me for months -- I just couldn't get very far no matter what I tried.
A friend came over one afternoon and, noticing this game, said that one of our classmates (who I didn't know very well), had the same game, and that he also hadn't solved it yet. Well, the next week I got together with this classmate, and we finished the entire game in a couple of hours.
This was not an earth-shattering event in any concrete sense.
However, the experience comes often to mind -- first, because that
classmate became a longtime friend who next week will be my best man;
but also, because it marked my first realization of the remarkable
possibilities unlocked by bringing two people, two bodies of
knowledge, two different ways of thinking, together. President Sample
emphasized the significance of this blending of types of thinking in
the 15th annual Pullias Lecture here at USC in March, 1993, suggesting
that:
At the boundaries and bridgings between separated fields of knowledge, dramatic things can happen. And even where there is not the reward of major discovery, there is at least the promise of a daring and exciting encounter as we seek in our minds to overcome the distance and sustain the tension between disparate ideas and modes of thinking.I feel that the synthesis of differing areas of thought is one of the greatest skills with which we as humans are endowed, and when put to use provides us with immense creative potential. A search to foster this interaction leads me to explore two disparate fields, and indeed drives much of what we all have been doing here at the university. Through dealings with our friends, classmates, and neighbors who are all taking different educational paths, through the General Education program, and recently through more and more courses which are truly interdisciplinary in nature, we have been in the ideal environment for this. It seems to me that this opportunity to bridge different fields, points of view, and modes of thinking is one of the most valuable experiences we could have to prepare us for making significant contributions to our society.
From here, then, how are we to put our experience into practice? There are of course very many different answers, which is precisely what allows for such creative and constructive potential. I would like to outline as an example one possible application we could pursue to improve society, one close to my heart: improvement and integration of general science literacy. With scientific issues presenting themselves ever more frequently in the legislative and judicial systems, it is becoming clear that lack of understanding and appreciation on both the scientific and nonscientific sides hinders progress.
Those of us who are scientists must endeavor to eliminate the impressions of elitism in, and rigid separations between, our several disciplines. Those who are not must attempt to develop--and encourage--enough of a conceptual grasp of scientific issues and methods in order to more capably guide our society's decisions in addressing future problems. Each of us should share in the responsibility of opening a greater appreciation of science's role in society.
In closing, by working to discern the diverse modes of thinking and approaching problems, and to acknowledge validity of each, we have a start. And as we integrate these approaches, either in our own study or by working closely with others, we will be amazed at what we can accomplish.
Thank you.