I would say that two parts of the presentation stood out to me more than any of the rest, and those were parts that weren’t necessarily even directly regarding the “Two Chemists” that the discussion aimed focus at. The two parts I found very interesting were in the beginning when we had to think about questions proposed to us, such as “What is air?”. Thinking about it from a lens of someone who doesn’t study science or particularly know much about science is interesting to think about, especially considering the people who were asking this back then were at the forefront of scientific discoveries. The next part I thought was interesting that I had never considered was the fact that Democracy and Science have evolved hand-in-hand with each other, leading one to believe that they do have some sort of correlation and connection.
I thought Dr. Cogan did a great job of presenting all of the information on the slides, and I could tell that he knew what he was talking about when presenting. I appreciated the most the in-depth backstory and information leading up to the main focal point of the presentation, and the passion that was showed when presenting.
I added the slide this year, Brenden, with the thought experiment considering air from an uneducated lens. It proved to be very popular. I think the reason may be that it is really hard to appreciate just how much we have learned from the past and just how much of our current knowledge actually defies our very senses. We tend to laugh at ideas like phlogiston and dismiss outdated concepts in science, until we are forced to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who lived in the past.