Disinterestedness is Essential in The Pursuit of Knowledge

In the natural sciences, disinterestedness is not crucial in the pursuit of knowledge, and may even be hindering. When looking at the natural science of biology being interested in what you are learning is extremely important. This is because when learning biology it entails learning many new terminologies, and in comparison to other natural sciences like Chemistry and Physics, relies a lot more on reading and memorizing terminology than solving equations. This can make biology feel extremely dull if someone is disinterested in the subject, and may hinder her academics as when a student is disinterested in a subject, it often leaves them demotivated to continue studying in that subject area. I saw this myself in one of my friends who was in my biology class. It became very apparent to me that they had no personal interest in biology at all, and found the subject very dull. This led to their grades suffering as a result, as they were not motivated to study or pay attention in class to what the teacher was saying. This led to my friend becoming even more about worried about the subject and essentially giving up on biology as they had no interest in the subject at all.

On the other hand, I do find biology to be interesting, though robust, subject and as such that reflects on my dedication in the subject. I do not struggle as much as my friend does in class, and I enjoy going to biology class. However, I too face the same struggles that my friend does when we learn a new topic in class that I am not as interested in. In this case, ones emotion and feelings towards the subject play a vital role in pursuing the knowledge. However, in contrast to this is the fact the in the natural sciences having too much personal interest can be detrimental to the pursuit of knowledge, and the propagation of said knowledge. In this case, disinterestedness is needed to pursue knowledge. Also in my biology class we learned about the scientific method. The scientific method is the way in which scientists deduce whether a hypothesis has any basis in the real world. As a result, this method is highly regarded, and extremely important in all the areas of natural sciences. However, we learned in biology class that there is a problem in science, where scientists will often downplay or even omit data that does not prove their hypothesis.

Additionally, a lot of companies now pay scientists to prove that their product, or what they are doing has no harm to the public, even if it ultimately does. This had led the reputation of the methodology in which knowledge in the natural sciences is produced to be questioned. In this case, being disinterested is essential, as science is supposed to be based on reason, and not emotion. When scientists are too emotionally attached to their hypothesis, this can lead them trying to do everything that they can to prove their results, which ultimately harms the quality of knowledge that would be produced.