Dr. David J. Waters received his B.S. and D.V.M. degrees from Cornell University and his PhD degree from the University of Minnesota.  Until 2014, he served as Professor of Comparative Oncology and Associate Director of the Center on Aging and The Life Course at Purdue University.  Currently, Dr. Waters is Director of The Center for Exceptional Longevity Studies at the Gerald P. Murphy Cancer Foundation.  Appointed to The National Academies of Sciences – Keck Futures Initiative Scientific Panel on Extending Human Healthspan in 2007, he is nationally recognized for his work on utilizing pet dogs as models of human aging.  He is a Fellow in the Biology of Aging, Gerontological Society of America.   Dr. Waters is also
an expert on the comparative aspects of prostate cancer in men and dogs.  His research at the Murphy Cancer Foundation, which targets the underexplored intersection of the fields of aging and cancer, is aimed at developing personalized interventions that promote successful aging and cancer avoidance.  As a teacher, Dr. Waters contributed significantly to Purdue University’s Dual Title PhD Program in Gerontology for more than a decade.  His course “To See and To Seize Opportunities” offered inter-disciplinary graduate students the opportunity to explore the skills and attitudes that promote self-renewal and peak performance in discovering and educating. In 2005, he was awarded The Great Teacher Award for Exemplary Interdisciplinary Teaching at Purdue.  In 2010, his first cross-country scientific expedition to study the oldest-living pet dogs in their homes as models of highly successful human aging – “The Old Grey Muzzle Tour” – was featured in USA Today, AARP Bulletin, and Good Morning America.  His TED^x talk “The Oldest Dogs as Our Greatest Teachers: Get the Words Out of Your Eyes” underscores how language limits the scientific method.

The sage of Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote: “Build, therefore, your own world.”  His dictum informs that each of us has a deep responsibility – to develop an authentic relationship with the natural world.  We do this by learning to advantageously modify the objects of our experience. To achieve this goal, we must seek to develop a framework of attitudes – a philosophy – that will provide the richest repertoire of responses to each encounter.  Not surprisingly, this developmental process is contingent upon how we use language, since the act of naming is at the root of all starting points.  In this paper, it will be argued that linguistic readiness – the openness to modifying the language we use to describe our problems and our process of finding solutions to those problems – can be key to developing a special set of attitudes that can propel us toward reaching our fullest potential.  Further, it will be proposed that a healthy exposure to this array of attitudes might be achievable as part of a K–12 general science education so that future scientists and non-scientists alike can grow to become more proficient in the art of possibility.