It is when you talk to writers-or actors-that you learn how deeply they need to understand science. David Williamson’s last few plays-to take just one example- were a tour de force on the uses and abuses of psychology. Williamson studied both that subject and engineering, on which he later lectured.
French translation? Surely not? In fact my brother, at the University of Nantes in Brittany, uses IT, dubbed TV news reports and cognitive science to give his students an interactive way to practise conversation. It can be done from English to French or vice versa-or in any other languages they might choose.
Latin humanism Professor Yasmin Haskell at the University of Western Australia has discovered a trove of poems from renaissance Italy in which medicine (hypochondria; chocolate therapy) is discussed. They give new insight into the thinking of that era. And although habits are changing, doctors and botanists still need Latin to some extent. The point is that the disciplines intermingle.
So what is the lesson for schools and universities? That science must be attached to every subject. As chair of the National Commission for Environmental Education, I visited several campuses (ANU, Murdoch, Macquarie) to propose that teaching about the environment be incorporated into every faculty. None of the deans we met objected. This is not a quixotic idea. Professor George Seddon, for example, one of our greatest thinkers on the environment (he’s been professor in four distinct disciplines, no less: English, Environment, Geology and Philosophy!) has written brilliantly about the influence of literature on how we think of nature and landscape and how we care for both as a result. Science could similarly be linked to law (as it already is at UNSW and Melbourne University), building and architecture, commerce, the arts and sport.
If other universities follow the example set by Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis at the University of Melbourne and favour general degrees, with specialisation coming only at postgraduate level, this universal distribution of science will be straightforward. What would that do for recruitment to scientific professions? According to a former federal education minister, John Dawkins, it can only do it good. Dawkins says the top science performers will always select themselves; others, having been allowed to study science to tertiary level without feeling a white coat must follow, may opt for one anyway.
Money incentives help too. The former speaker of the US House of Representatives, Republican Newt Gingrich, himself a keen dinosaur man, has proposed that American high schoolers choosing science in Years 10-12 be paid the equivalent of a McSalary-what they would earn serving fast food. In Australia one sensible measure would be to reduce university science students’ HECS debt, which is now punitive and exceeds, on average, the amount owed by other students (can anyone really be surprised that labs are emptying?)
At school, why not pay science teachers more? It takes a generation to train new ones, so in the meantime we should try to recruit retired science professionals, as well as engineers, to fill the gap. This measure did not frighten our Council on Environmental Education either, though I thought it would. Implementation is another thing. But it is already happening in some places, so examples can be learned from.
As for what actually happens in schools and universities, it is plain that many students, like me 40 years back, are bored to jagging sobs. Science in class looks like a vast edifice of arcane information, clear to the Rain Man but tough going for everyone else. This is what students say. What they need is more practical problem solving. The discussion of ideas would also help. It takes many tutorials to free the minds and mouths of youngsters never before required to be articulate.
What of the future of science itself? Should it simply be allowed to find its own way untrammeled? Is there any point in putting up ‘flagships’, or trying to ‘pick winners’, or ‘waging wars’ on targets such as cancer or drought? Science costs lots of money, which is one reason it is in disfavour: politicians do not often want to spend millions, or even billions, on vast bits of boffinry that might, just might, bring results in twenty years’ time.
And those results are not predictable. Tom Barlow in Australian Miracle tackles the question of picking winners by citing President Nixon’s failed war on cancer. Billions of dollars and decades later, not much had changed. Compare this with the Australian Lawrence Bragg’s seemingly obscure investigation of the shape of molecules with his A-team in Cambridge -basic science on stilts. The result: the modern drugs industry, the human genome and the future of medicine, genetic engineering and- who knows?-the creation of new forms of life.
But one thing is clear: our future is dreadfully uncertain. Australia alone could face severe climate change, drought, the possible collapse of biodiversity together with soil depletion, water crises and much else. Try tackling those without a scientific infrastructure or a populace informed about what’s happening to them.
The blood chills.
The Hunches of Nostradamus
2008 Student recruitment in Science falls below that for Cake Decoration and Psychic Massage. Minister calls for national campaign.
2009 CSIRO is restructured. Two new ‘flagships’ proposed: Universal Happiness and Biofools. Typist sacked.
2010 Professor Melvin Schwartz (MIT) wins Nobel Prize. He is claimed as Australian because he once changed planes in Brisbane.
2011 Barrier Reef dissolves. Minister promises it will recover.
2012 CSIRO restructures.
2013 ABC-TV Science outsourced to Beyond Productions. Beyond sold to Time Warner.
2014 Science studies at Australian universities offered only as online courses-to save expenditure on apparatus.
2015 Australian researcher at University of Melbourne confirms means for wiping out malaria parasite. Immediately offered posts in Geneva and Baltimore.
2016 Minister identifies crisis in science student recruitment. Sends out press release from 2008 unaltered except for date change.
2017 Cairns destroyed by cyclone. Toowoomba goes dry and is evacuated.
2018 Remaining university Geology and Physics departments closed. Subjects offered as part of first-year Commerce.
2019 Australian Museum becomes dinosaur theme park. Its scientific research ends.
2020 CSIRO restructures. Science Minister renamed as ‘Minister for Restructuring’. Calls for…
3. The Future of God – God’s Only Excuse
God’s only excuse (He doesn’t exist).
– Jean-Paul Sartre
One key to the future of the human race is, strange as it may seem, something that probably isn’t there. He was never there; but he was always the most important player in the pack both for winners and for losers. He is the ELEPHANT not in the room. He is the means by which his self-proclaimed representatives make us resigned to our fate, stoic about calamity, fatalistic in the extreme.
His is the name called as we invade, bomb, crusade, invoke the law, terrorise. He may, of course, be entirely innocent of all that is done in his cause. He may not be the one to blame at all. Particularly if he’s absent. But what is done on his behalf continues to be one of the most malign influences in every country on Earth.