About Science
It was the night of the eclipse, and I was on my
way to pick up Julia. Her shift at Shoppers ended at 10 pm, the very moment of
totality.
It was very cold that night, but the sky was
clear. I had been hopping in and out of the house, checking the progress of the
Earth's shadow across the full Moon. I decided to leave a bit early for the
Tecumseh mall where my niece worked, a twenty minute drive from Belle River.
That way I could watch the event in the parking lot, in the warm comfort of my
car.
I don't listen to the radio much anymore, even while driving. But that night in my excitement I forgot to bring my iPod. So I turned on the radio and heard the familiar voice of David Cayley, one of the producers of Ideas, whom I've met occasionally while visiting Max at the CBC's Toronto headquarters. I used to be a regular listener to Ideas, but they came late to podcasting, with only a few "best of" programs available, and it had been a while since I checked their schedule.
I had tuned in during a conversation between Cayley and Sajay Samuel, a professor at Penn State. Both men had been friends and correspondents with Ivan Illich, and had learned from the philosopher to distrust the role of experts in a democracy. As I listened Samuel went on to champion a return to common sense, as the only way to evaluate the often obscure and counterintuitive findings of science. His common sense he said, is not what Einstein decried as the prejudices of childhood, but Aristotle's synthesis of our sensory perceptions, grounded, not in experiment, but experience.
The Global Warming controversy is one example Samuel gave, where we should step aside, step away, from science. He does not doubt that mankind has despoiled the planet. We do not need supercomputers to tell us we've gone too far, that we "shit in our own back yard."
But the problem, he said, with climate science is that it is not about what we ought to do, what limits we should set to the way we live, but what we can do, what we can get away with. Science he says, has only a modest role to play in discussions of politics, of justice, of the public good.
I arrived at Shoppers Drug Mart at about a quarter to 10. The moon had risen high enough not to be visible through my windshield. So I lowered the windows and turned up the radio, and got out of the car, still listening to the program as the last sliver of bright moonlight disappeared. Customers and employees exiting the store gave me some odd looks. I redirected their attention to the sky.
By the time Julie came out the news was on and the eclipse was the top story. After a few more minutes standing in the cold we drove back to Belle River.
I dropped her off at my brother's and hurried home so I could listen to the start of the program, from the CBC Calgary webcast, which is two hours behind Ontario's. That's when I discovered, on the Ideas homepage, that this show was part of a series by Cayley called How to Think about Science. And that they were all available as podcasts on iTunes. After I set my computer to work, downloading the whole bunch, I went back outside and watched the red moon become white again.
There have been 17 episodes so far, with more to come. Each is about 53 minutes long. Cayley's interviews include physical scientists, scientists who study scientists, historians of science, philosophers, and a poet. They don't all agree with Samuel, but the idea that science doesn't have a monopoly on knowing or wisdom is a common theme.
Here's a small sample of what I've heard.
In the first program Simon Shaffer (Leviathan and the Air Pump) talks about the social construction of scientific knowledge, with its emphasis on trust, and not, as the myth claims, skepticism. He goes on to say that the scientific truths thus manufactured are very often valid reflections of reality. Social construction is what our species does, from cars to theoretical physics. And scientists, says Shaffer, aren't all that different from skilled carpenters. They get the job done.
This week Peter Galison (Objectivity) described how the distinction between applied and pure science is disappearing. Indeed, throughout the series science is taken to include medicine and other technologies.
Several episodes examine the rapidly changing science of genetics. I had already read Evelyn Fox Keller's book, The Century of the Gene, and learned even more from Caley's interview with her.
As she and others noted, the very notion of a "gene" is problematic. When the word was coined it was purely speculative. No one knew where they were, what they looked like, or how they worked. It just seemed that there ought to be something that was responsible, somehow, for the development and inheritance of body traits.
With the discovery of DNA the definition of a gene was changed to one gene for each protein, for each trait. But the decoding of the genome left us with too few genes for that explanation to work. Today biology doesn't find the model of genes, or even genetic coding, to be of much use. What's going on in our cells is more complicated than we had guessed.
Several embarrassing moments in 20th century science are raked over. The scientific management of Canada's cod fisheries was a disaster. On a smaller scale, after Chernobyl sheep farmers in Northern England lost their herds because of false assurances from scientists, about the half life of radioactive cesium. It turns out, according to Brian Wynne, that science produces dogma and ignorance as well as knowledge.
Not to end on a gloomy note, the cumulative effect of listening to these podcasts has left me with a better appreciation of what scientists do, and a desire to see them do it better and more effectively. And it's also a relief to know that they are no better prepared than the rest of us to exercise our responsibilities as citizens.
(Credit: dbTechno )
I don't listen to the radio much anymore, even while driving. But that night in my excitement I forgot to bring my iPod. So I turned on the radio and heard the familiar voice of David Cayley, one of the producers of Ideas, whom I've met occasionally while visiting Max at the CBC's Toronto headquarters. I used to be a regular listener to Ideas, but they came late to podcasting, with only a few "best of" programs available, and it had been a while since I checked their schedule.
I had tuned in during a conversation between Cayley and Sajay Samuel, a professor at Penn State. Both men had been friends and correspondents with Ivan Illich, and had learned from the philosopher to distrust the role of experts in a democracy. As I listened Samuel went on to champion a return to common sense, as the only way to evaluate the often obscure and counterintuitive findings of science. His common sense he said, is not what Einstein decried as the prejudices of childhood, but Aristotle's synthesis of our sensory perceptions, grounded, not in experiment, but experience.
The Global Warming controversy is one example Samuel gave, where we should step aside, step away, from science. He does not doubt that mankind has despoiled the planet. We do not need supercomputers to tell us we've gone too far, that we "shit in our own back yard."
But the problem, he said, with climate science is that it is not about what we ought to do, what limits we should set to the way we live, but what we can do, what we can get away with. Science he says, has only a modest role to play in discussions of politics, of justice, of the public good.
I arrived at Shoppers Drug Mart at about a quarter to 10. The moon had risen high enough not to be visible through my windshield. So I lowered the windows and turned up the radio, and got out of the car, still listening to the program as the last sliver of bright moonlight disappeared. Customers and employees exiting the store gave me some odd looks. I redirected their attention to the sky.
By the time Julie came out the news was on and the eclipse was the top story. After a few more minutes standing in the cold we drove back to Belle River.
I dropped her off at my brother's and hurried home so I could listen to the start of the program, from the CBC Calgary webcast, which is two hours behind Ontario's. That's when I discovered, on the Ideas homepage, that this show was part of a series by Cayley called How to Think about Science. And that they were all available as podcasts on iTunes. After I set my computer to work, downloading the whole bunch, I went back outside and watched the red moon become white again.
There have been 17 episodes so far, with more to come. Each is about 53 minutes long. Cayley's interviews include physical scientists, scientists who study scientists, historians of science, philosophers, and a poet. They don't all agree with Samuel, but the idea that science doesn't have a monopoly on knowing or wisdom is a common theme.
Here's a small sample of what I've heard.
In the first program Simon Shaffer (Leviathan and the Air Pump) talks about the social construction of scientific knowledge, with its emphasis on trust, and not, as the myth claims, skepticism. He goes on to say that the scientific truths thus manufactured are very often valid reflections of reality. Social construction is what our species does, from cars to theoretical physics. And scientists, says Shaffer, aren't all that different from skilled carpenters. They get the job done.
This week Peter Galison (Objectivity) described how the distinction between applied and pure science is disappearing. Indeed, throughout the series science is taken to include medicine and other technologies.
Several episodes examine the rapidly changing science of genetics. I had already read Evelyn Fox Keller's book, The Century of the Gene, and learned even more from Caley's interview with her.
As she and others noted, the very notion of a "gene" is problematic. When the word was coined it was purely speculative. No one knew where they were, what they looked like, or how they worked. It just seemed that there ought to be something that was responsible, somehow, for the development and inheritance of body traits.
With the discovery of DNA the definition of a gene was changed to one gene for each protein, for each trait. But the decoding of the genome left us with too few genes for that explanation to work. Today biology doesn't find the model of genes, or even genetic coding, to be of much use. What's going on in our cells is more complicated than we had guessed.
Several embarrassing moments in 20th century science are raked over. The scientific management of Canada's cod fisheries was a disaster. On a smaller scale, after Chernobyl sheep farmers in Northern England lost their herds because of false assurances from scientists, about the half life of radioactive cesium. It turns out, according to Brian Wynne, that science produces dogma and ignorance as well as knowledge.
Not to end on a gloomy note, the cumulative effect of listening to these podcasts has left me with a better appreciation of what scientists do, and a desire to see them do it better and more effectively. And it's also a relief to know that they are no better prepared than the rest of us to exercise our responsibilities as citizens.
(Credit: dbTechno )
Posted: Sat - April 19, 2008 at 06:30 PM
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Published On: Apr 19, 2008 08:54 PM
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Published On: Apr 19, 2008 08:54 PM