I am very happy to support CERN Summer Students.

I’m no great humanitarian. In fact, I sometimes feel discouraged when I watch the news or read about history. Richard Dawkins suggested in The Selfish Gene, that altruism is a derivative of our selfish genes. My lifetime of achievement and accumulating resources have produced a lot of rewarding experiences. And I believe my altruism is also somewhat self-centred, because the satisfaction I feel supporting CERN students is every bit as strong and real as any other source of fulfilment I’ve experienced.

We all develop a model of reality that functions as a survival tool. Science-based models of reality have replaced a great many ancient metaphysical models over the past several hundred years. Once a metaphysical model becomes rooted, most individuals use it as a survival tool but stop developing it further. Its utility is set and its development is arrested. One aspect of science-based models is that they don’t stop developing. Experimentation continues and theories change. Uncertainty is built into these models so the search for meaning continues.

CERN promotes this search for the advancement of scientific models of reality. It has been my great privilege to be a spectator of this search for meaning. The search for meaning is what makes humans unique. Richard Feynman, in his book titled The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, wrote about the joy of discovery. And I hope the Summer Students are going to experience a great deal of fulfilment.

I want to support young talented people in their path towards building their unique models of reality and I hope they will enjoy their experience at CERN – enjoy their colleagues, share their cultures, become friends, share ideas and share science. Most people will never have the opportunity to experience science so up close and I am happy to be able to make this possible for some. I look forward to hearing about where their journeys will lead them.

Michael Paulson