How science separates fact and emotion | Heather Heying | Big Think
How science separates fact and emotion
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Heather Heying knows that a true understanding of the world comes not from the answers alone. Sure, they help, but the questions are of equal importance. And the right questions can make science that much more appealing and three-dimensional. You can follow Heather on Twitter here.
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HEATHER HEYING:
Heather Heying is an evolutionary biologist and former Professor at Evergreen State College. She applies the tool kit of evolutionary theory to problems large and small, some seemingly intractable, some possibly trivial—what to eat, how to teach and parent and be an upstanding citizen, what to avoid, and what to seek.
Heather came to prominence after she and her husband, Bret Weinstein, stood up to supporters of an enforced “Day of Absence” for white staff and teachers at Evergreen State College.
Follow Heather on twitter: @HeatherEHeying and on Medium and through her website, heatherheying.com.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Heather Heying: I started most of my programs, when I was teaching, with an exercise that I call 20 Questions, which I borrowed in part from the Organization for Tropical Studies, which does this exercise with graduate students who it’s got in Costa Rica or other tropical field sites.
It involves taking people out—you have to have access to nature, you have to have access to a fair bit of nature—Taking people out and asking them in advance to just take out pen and paper; no phone, water if they need it but no food. Promise them that they’re not going to die out there, and be true to your promise, make sure that you don’t abandon them.
You take people out and you drop them in some spot, and if you have a group of people you drop them out of sight of one another and you say, “Sit here for two hours. I will be back in two hours. But for these two hours just sit here and be, and let your senses start to tell you what you’re experiencing.”
For a while (and depending on how long it’s been since you’ve really spent time in nature), it’s just going to be your brain yammering at you telling you that you have things to do, this is a waste of your time, that you’re bored, that you wish you weren’t being told to do this.
At some point, two hours is usually long enough for that to fade away.
And so the instruction is let that all that wash over you, but try then to start watching and hearing, and smelling if you like, what it is that is going on around you.
And at whatever point you feel like it start writing down questions that you have about what you’re experiencing. The goal is to write down 20, but if you write down five that’s fine, if you write down 40 that’s fine too, and try to make the questions be about what’s going on external to your head as opposed to questions that your own brain is generating that has nothing to do with what you’re actually experiencing right now.
So, people spend two hours out in nature doing this and I’ve done this in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve done it in the San Juan Islands, in the high desert of Washington, in Ecuador, in Panama, in the Amazon, all sorts of places, and you get different results in each of these places, because the questions that people can ask when there are parrots around (versus mountains) are quite different.
But you pick them up you say “Okay you’re free now.” And you’re free “either for the rest of the day and we’ll come back together bring your questions tomorrow”, or “at least for a few hours, like you don’t have to think about this but go just let this percolate.”
We come back together, say it’s in the afternoon of the same day, you break people up into groups four or five and say, “Okay give your questions to the person on your left and have them choose their favorite question from your list, and you choose your favorite question for the list.” And so in a group of five end up with ten questions that people really, really like that they had written down.
And now start to categorize them.
In the case of an educational environment that’s about discovering evolutionary truths I tend to ask them to categorize questions on the basis of, is this a factual question?
Is it a ‘what is’? “What was that bird?” “What is the name of that cloud formation?”
Is it a ‘how’-style question, a proximate question? Like “How does the bird find the flower?”
Or is it a ‘why’-style question, an adaptive question, an ultimate level question? “W…
For the full transcript, check out https://bigthink.com/videos/heather-heying-why-vs-how-what-kinds-of-questions-are-the-most-important
@christopherphillipskeates9194
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
why do scientists call people crack pots and religion calls people heathens …
@quarteracreadventures855
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Whenever I see Heather Heying, I click- and I am never disappointed. I learn a lot from her.
@RonnieD1970
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Everygreen didn't deserve you or Bretts talent as educators. Evergreens loss is everyone on social medias gain!
@ashishmehta1691
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Is the department that names the videos also involved in watching the videos after they're completed? Or are those two separate jobs?
@jan050375
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
i don't think the title has been answered.
@gantmj
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
And this is why neoMarxists call it a white, male tool of dominance, because it doesn't bow to their feelings.
@linkking46
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Very interesting video, yet not an appropiate tittle, it has nothing to do with how science separates emotion and facts
@1996Pinocchio
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
This is basically meditation and I think this really could help many people with depression for example.
@dyllanmiller4267
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
If you agree with me you're clearly gifted. If not, you're clearly an idiot. No truth but what I believe. Ontology is dead…
@importantname
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
nothing at all to do with the dislocation of science from emotion.
@blackfriarsffc5232
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
thank you for your thoughts and experience
@jynxkizs
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Hmm… discussing metapolitics and processes seem to be more acceptable than pushing politics of any side, as evidenced by the likes to dislike ratio. This might be the common ground we are looking for, at least among thinkers. Plenty of progressives would agree with this and Jordan Peterson's last video too. I think media has been unfairly portraying all sides by focusing on the minority of worst examples.
@PetarStamenkovic
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Objective reality? How bigoted of you! There is no Truth. Truth depends on your skin color and especially on the type of your genitalia! Everyone knows this.
You're just brain washed by the Western patriarchy of white privileged capitalists swines. You're degrading women of color, minorities and members of LGBTQAAPERTUAASSTU+
Big Think? I think not! More like Big noThink. Rage quit/unsubscribe !!1!!1!
@cybersekkin
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
"Intricately tied their identity to this thing being true, whether or not it is…" is seen as a good thing? Passion is great, but this phrase shows a serious problem. This is a dividing factor more than something that allows people to work together. Odd that the societies dysfunctioning is being touted as a good thing for science to accept.
Yes, be passionate about your way of seeing things, but don't let that keep you from considering alternative theories/proposals or working with others with differing opinions. There is often a bit from an alternative theory that can improve your own, or can even show a huge hole in your own theory (maybe they have the same hole in theirs and you see it in theirs and then notice it in your own).
Passion is only valuable when tempered with reason. Don't chase it just because it feels good. You could win a debate of theories, but still be just as wrong as the theory you "beat."
@RecreationalUseOnly
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
I really wish liberals could separate their emotions and look at facts. Not saying this to troll, but saying this as an American who wants a healthy balance. When people who believe in capitalism or state crime statistics are beaten or ran out of speaking engagements, there’s an issue.
@RecreationalUseOnly
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
I really wish liberals could separate their emotions and look at facts. Not saying this to troll, but saying this as an American who wants a healthy balance. When people who believe in capitalism or state crime statistics are beaten or ran out of speaking engagements, there’s an issue.
@RecreationalUseOnly
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
I really wish liberals could separate their emotions and look at facts. Not saying this to troll, but saying this as an American who wants a healthy balance. When people who believe in capitalism or state crime statistics are beaten or ran out of speaking engagements, there’s an issue.
@nessingman
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Sounds like a night on shrooms
@Jengis369
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
it almost sounds as if you're saying that science can't be done without conflicting views and opinions, but that simply is not the case!
@RamkrishanYT
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
there could have been a better title
@hungrymusicwolf
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Any scientist who proclaims that science separates fact from emotion are themselves being controlled by their emotions (and preconceived notions). What things such as peer review does is not remove emotions but average it out; if you take 5 random scientists and ask all of them if this is "good enough" you don't get an objective notion of "good enough" but an approximation of the average opinion of a scientist in that field of expertise. In fact you CANNOT take fact out of emotion because our brains are not wired in such a way that we can do so; the same brain chemicals and brain patterns that are released while a scientist is doing research are also being released while they are experiencing different emotions.
The only way our brains can think is through the same neurochemicals/ reactions that we experience emotions and we cannot remove that from our thinking and we also shouldn't want to because there are an infinite set of facts that are completely pointless and you need to know what you value (a feeling / emotional experience) in order to know what you have to research.
@عبدالله-د3ش4ذ
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
I like what She said about their bored restless and within two hours that dissipate yes Boredom is God’s Allahs way to get you moving looking and boredom is a mans way to not pay attention long enough
@WhatsUpBuddies1
August 2, 2025 at 5:24 pm
I love the diverse amount of views Big Think is able to give a fair presentation of.
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