Abstract

Science is not merely a collection of established facts organized in school textbooks. It is a culture of curiosity, a way of encountering the world by observing closely, touching and testing things for ourselves, and sharing questions with others. From this perspective, a science museum should be more than a place where completed scientific knowledge is displayed. It should be a place where science actually happens.

When visitors manipulate an exhibit, discover a result that contradicts their expectations, pose questions to scientists and science communicators, or compare interpretations with family, friends, and strangers, they are participating in the essential practices of science. Science advances through collective inquiry: observing phenomena, examining evidence together, questioning assumptions, and constructing better explanations. Scientific knowledge matters, but so does the social and intellectual process through which that knowledge is continually tested and revised.

This role becomes even more important in the age of artificial intelligence, when information and answers are available almost anywhere and at any time. The central challenge is no longer simply what we know, but what we are curious about, how we determine whether a claim is reliable, and how we develop our thinking through dialogue with others. From a scientist’s perspective, this keynote explores the science museum as a cultural space where people experience science with their bodies, ask questions together, and cultivate scientific habits of mind. It will present compelling reasons why, even in an age of unlimited digital knowledge, we still need to visit science museums: not merely to learn the answers that science has already produced, but to experience how better questions, stronger evidence, and shared inquiry can transform the way we understand the world.

Biography

· Assistant professor in the Department of Child Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
· Postdoctoral associate in the Department of Child Psychiatry at Yale University
· Head of MoonSoul Graduate School of Future Strategy in KAIST
· President of Korean Society for Computational Neuroscience

· 2009, Young Global Leader (YGL), World Economic Forum (Davos Forum)
· 2010, Korea Science and Culture Award
· 2019, the Republic of Korea Order of Merit