Evidence for Addressing the Unsolved through EdGe-ucating or Can Informing Science Promote Democratic Knowledge Production?

Nearly everyone can be successfully involved with intellectual frontiers – if they are efficiently educated to do so. This article offers evidence of the processes applied to bring ordinary citizens to the edges of the known, and beyond, which the article calls, “edGe-ucating.” David Cavallo, for example, an MIT engineer, has guided Thai villagers to break through expert understandings to address a specific local problem that required “sophisticated mathematics, biology, engineering, physics, and computer science.” The purpose of this article is to encourage researchers, educators, and problem solvers to engage with the professional adventures of democratizing intellectual breakthroughs through edGe-ucating. The source of this encouragement will be evidence that this is not only possible, but that there are a variety of experiences to draw on to be successful in edGe-ucating neophytes into our respective disciplines. The conclusion from the research is that, if our international communities of inquirers (along with our institutions and agencies) worked together to edGe-ucate, more will be accomplished at the edges of our respective inquiry disciplines, a far greater number of breakthroughs will occur, and more world citizens will understand, through their own experience and the experiences of their friends and neighbors, the rich nature of scientific inquiry at the frontiers of knowledge. Most important, all societies will benefit from the creative intellectual work of their citizens in ways that have never been widely developed or promoted.