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| TeachtheFacts.org |
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: It is hard to know exactly when it became acceptable for U.S. politicians to be antiscience. For some two centuries science was a preeminent force in American politics, and scientific innovation has been the leading driver of U.S. economic growth since World War II. Kids in the 1960s gathered in school cafeterias to watch moon launches and landings on televisions wheeled in on carts. Breakthroughs in the 1970s and 1980s sparked the computer revolution and a new information economy. Advances in biology, based on evolutionary theory, created the biotech industry. New research in genetics is poised to transform the understanding of disease and the practice of medicine, agriculture and other fields.
The Founding Fathers were science enthusiasts. Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer and scientist, built the primary justification for the nation's independence on the thinking of Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and John Locke—the creators of physics, inductive reasoning and empiricism. He called them his “trinity of three greatest men.” If anyone can discover the truth by using reason and science, Jefferson reasoned, then no one is naturally closer to the truth than anyone else. Consequently, those in positions of authority do not have the right to impose their beliefs on other people. The people themselves retain this inalienable right. Based on this foundation of science—of knowledge gained by systematic study and testing instead of by the assertions of ideology—the argument for a new, democratic form of government was self-evident.
I was one of those kids in the 1960s. To much credit, I still am "in spirit" (no longer chronologically). As I read this article, two quotes come to mind from Isaac Asimov:
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
"What [indeed] is the matter with Kansas?"
We went from a nation of science enthusiasts hopeful for a bright future, to a neurotic herd anticipating (some gladly) the apocalypse. A generation later in the 21st Century, kids that love STEM are still nerds and outcasts. I hear the loudest, shrillest voices saying the most inane things about women's reproductive issues and pregnancy, a bubblegum so-called understanding of "scientific knowledge," evolution, the age of the earth and the universe, climate change, social issues. Debates are won not on facts, but "style points" like American Idol despite numerous fact-checked obfuscations. The President of the United States started his administration wanting to address school children, encouraging them to study and work hard for a successful school year - not a novel notion at all as history bears witness - yet we allowed whole school districts to ignore the message entirely, offer excuses for children to skip the speech in the lunchroom. Some called it "a socialist agenda."
"Magical thinking" rules the day when we cannot see the precipitous drop in of our once preeminence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and our own behaviors antithetical to its achievement.
Scientific American: Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy
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