For such technological initiatives to be understood and supported, significant improvements in public understanding of science and technology are essential. We are thinking beings. Our minds are our distinguishing characteristic as a species. We are not stronger or swifter than many other animals that share this planet with us. We are only smarter. In addition to the immense practical benefit of having a scientifically literate public, the contemplation of science and technology permits us to exercise our intellectual faculties to the limits of our capabilities. Science is an exploration of the intricate, subtle and awesome universe we inhabit. Those who practice it know, at least on occasion, a rare kind of exhilaration that Socrates said was the greatest of human pleasures. It is a communicable pleasure. To facilitate informed public participation in technological decision making, to decrease the alienation too many citizens feel from our technological society, and for the sheer joy that comes from knowing a deep thing well, we need better science education, a superior communication of its powers and delights. A simple place to start is to undo the self-destructive decline in federal scholarships and fellowships for science researchers and science teachers at the college, graduate and postdoctoral levels.
The most effective agents to communicate science to the public are television, motion pictures and newspapers-where the science offerings are often dreary, inaccurate, ponderous, grossly caricatured or (as with much Saturday-morning commercial television programing for children) hostile to science. There have been astonishing recent findings on the exploration of the planets, the role of small brain proteins in affecting our emotional lives, the collisions of continents, the evolution of the human species (and the extent to which our past prefigures our future), the ultimate structure of matter (and the question of whether there are elementary particles or an infinite regress of them), the attempt to communicate with civilizations on planets of other stars, the nature of the genetic code (which determines our heredity and makes us cousins to all the other plants and animals on our planet), and the ultimate questions of the origin, nature and fate of life, worlds and the universe as a whole. Recent findings on these questions can be understood by any intelligent person. Why are they so rarely discussed in the media, in schools, in everyday conversation?
Civilizations can be characterized by how they approach such questions, how they nourish the mind as well as the body. The modern scientific pursuit of these questions represents an attempt to acquire a generally accepted view of our place in the cosmos; it requires open-minded creativity, tough-minded skepticism and a fresh sense of wonder. These questions are different from the practical issues I discussed earlier, but they are connected with such issues and-as in the example of Faraday and Maxwell-the encouragement of pure research may be the most reliable guarantee available that we will have the intellectual and technical wherewithal to deal with the practical problems facing us.
Only a small fraction of the most able youngsters enter scientific careers. I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. Something happens in the school years to discourage their interest (and it is not mainly puberty); we must understand and circumvent this dangerous discouragement. No one can predict where the future leaders of science will come from. It is clear that Albert Einstein became a scientist in spite of, not because of, his schooling (Chapter 3). In his Autobiography, Malcolm X describes a numbers runner who never wrote down a bet but carried a lifetime of transactions perfectly in his head. What contributions to society, Malcolm asked, would such a person have made with adequate education and encouragement? The most brilliant youngsters are a national and a global resource. They require special care and feeding.
Many of the problems facing us may be soluble, but only if we are willing to embrace brilliant, daring and complex solutions. Such solutions require brilliant, daring and complex people. I believe that there are many more of them around-in every nation, ethnic group and degree of affluence-than we realize. The training of such youngsters must not, of course, be restricted to science and technology; indeed, the compassionate application of new technology to human problems requires a deep understanding of human nature and human culture, a general education in the broadest sense.
We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken our evolution into our own hands. For the first time we possess the means for intentional or inadvertent self-destruction. We also have, I believe, the means for passing through this stage of technological adolescence into a long-lived, rich and fulfilling maturity for all the members of our species. But there is not much time to determine to which fork of the road we are committing our children and our future.
PART II. THE PARADOXERS
CHAPTER 5
PLANT’S HEARTBEAT THRILLS SCIENTISTS AT
OXFORD MEETING
Hindu Savant causes further sensation by
showing “blood” of plant flowing
AUDIENCE SITS ABSORBED
Watches with rapt attention as lecturer submits
snapdragon to death struggle
The New York Times
August 1, 1926, page 1
William James used to preach the “will to believe.”
For my part, I should wish
to preach the “will to doubt.”…
What is wanted is not the will to believe,
but the wish to find out, which is
the exact opposite.
BERTRAND RUSSELL,
Sceptical Essays (1928)
IN GREECE of the second century A.D., during the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, there lived a master con man named Alexander of Abonutichus. Handsome, clever and totally unscrupulous, in the words of one of his contemporaries, he “went about living on occult pretensions.” In his most famous imposture, “he rushed into the marketplace, naked except for a gold-spangled loincloth; with nothing but this and his scimitar, and shaking his long, loose hair, like fanatics who collect money in the name of Cybele, he climbed onto a lofty altar and delivered a harangue” predicting the advent of a new and oracular god. Alexander then raced to the construction site of a temple, the crowd streaming after him, and discovered-where he had previously buried it-a goose egg in which he had sealed up a baby snake. Opening the egg, he announced the snakelet as the prophesied god. Alexander retired to his house for a few days, and then admitted the breathless crowds, who observed his body now entwined with a large serpent: the snake had grown impressively in the interim.
The serpent was, in fact, of a large and conveniently docile variety, procured for this purpose earlier in Macedonia, and outfitted with a linen head of somewhat human countenance. The room was dimly lit. Because of the press of the crowd, no visitor could stay for very long or inspect the serpent very carefully. The opinion of the multitude was that the seer had indeed delivered a god.
Alexander then pronounced the god ready to answer written questions delivered in sealed envelopes. When alone, he would lift off or duplicate the seal, read the message, remake the envelope and attach a response. People flocked from all over the Empire to witness this marvel, an oracular serpent with the head of a man. In those cases where the oracle later proved not just ambiguous but grossly wrong, Alexander had a simple solution: he altered his record of the response he had given. And if the question of a rich man or woman revealed some weakness or guilty secret, Alexander did not scruple at extortion. The result of all this imposture was an income equivalent today to several hundred thousand dollars per year and fame rivaled by few men of his time.