Talk about your Scorched Mirth...
You don't want to miss this column from billmon.
4 days ago
Thursday, August 11, 2005
NO PLACE TO HIDE
It’s the headline we’ve been dreading, yet knew was coming. Warming Hits Tipping Point says the Guardian, because a vast part of Siberia, “ an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age."
'The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.'
Because of the feedback effect and the resulting release of methane gases, estimates of temperature rises over the next century will probably be revised upward as much as 25% just based on this single finding.
"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."
Various climate scientists and ecologist have been warning that something like this was around the corner. But the oil-drunk Bushheads, soaked in flatulent denial, are so far behind on the climate crisis that the public is also several steps from understanding the nature and dimension of the problem, and especially what must be done.
The argument about how aggressively to curb greenhouse gases that has absorbed everyone now becomes an argument primarily about responsibility to the far future. If we have passed the tipping point in Siberia it means that nothing anyone does now, not even a 95% reduction in carbon dioxide, is going to stop the melting.
That is, any reduction now or in the near future MAY help even in the short term, so it's worth doing, but if people expect it to happen and it doesn't, they must be prepared to know that what they are doing now is really for the far future.
Meanwhile, the things that are going to have to be done first to deal with the inevitable in that short term aren’t even being discussed, because the Bushheads and their supporters deny anything truly serious is happening. Another danger we face is the public not understanding that cutting emissions, etc. probably won’t benefit them in their lifetimes (except in terms of healthier air and water, of course) and so they could refuse to continue to switch to clean renewable and sustainable energy, thus condemning the future to even greater horrors, such as the biotic earth as we know it.
That's why we have to begin attending to the future, and thinking about it as clearly as we can. In this case especially, it helps us to focus on what kinds of things we need to do in appropriate time frames: what should be we doing now for the near future, the next 10 or 25 or 50 years, and what must we do now and for a long time, if there is to be a future beyond that.
It’s the headline we’ve been dreading, yet knew was coming. Warming Hits Tipping Point says the Guardian, because a vast part of Siberia, “ an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age."
'The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.'
Because of the feedback effect and the resulting release of methane gases, estimates of temperature rises over the next century will probably be revised upward as much as 25% just based on this single finding.
"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."
Various climate scientists and ecologist have been warning that something like this was around the corner. But the oil-drunk Bushheads, soaked in flatulent denial, are so far behind on the climate crisis that the public is also several steps from understanding the nature and dimension of the problem, and especially what must be done.
The argument about how aggressively to curb greenhouse gases that has absorbed everyone now becomes an argument primarily about responsibility to the far future. If we have passed the tipping point in Siberia it means that nothing anyone does now, not even a 95% reduction in carbon dioxide, is going to stop the melting.
That is, any reduction now or in the near future MAY help even in the short term, so it's worth doing, but if people expect it to happen and it doesn't, they must be prepared to know that what they are doing now is really for the far future.
Meanwhile, the things that are going to have to be done first to deal with the inevitable in that short term aren’t even being discussed, because the Bushheads and their supporters deny anything truly serious is happening. Another danger we face is the public not understanding that cutting emissions, etc. probably won’t benefit them in their lifetimes (except in terms of healthier air and water, of course) and so they could refuse to continue to switch to clean renewable and sustainable energy, thus condemning the future to even greater horrors, such as the biotic earth as we know it.
That's why we have to begin attending to the future, and thinking about it as clearly as we can. In this case especially, it helps us to focus on what kinds of things we need to do in appropriate time frames: what should be we doing now for the near future, the next 10 or 25 or 50 years, and what must we do now and for a long time, if there is to be a future beyond that.
NO SHAME
"Have you no shame?”
Clear Channel, the radio monopoly of mediocre music 24/7 on every station everywhere, is sponsoring an “anti-Cindy Sheehan” barbeque in Crawford, Texas.
Who is Cindy Sheehan, that she deserves such powerful scorn? Here’s a succinct description, courtesy of MoveOn: On April 4th last year, 24-year-old Army Specialist Casey Sheehan died in Iraq. This week, while President Bush vacations in Texas, Casey's mother, Cindy Sheehan, sits vigil outside the president's ranch. Cindy says that she won't leave until President Bush meets with her to discuss the war--even if it means spending all of August there. Cindy Sheehan was not an anti-war activist, but the loss of her son and the mounting evidence of deception by the Bush administration pushed her to speak out. While Cindy camps roadside in Texas, dozens of other military moms are flying to Texas to join her.
MoveOn continued: Her story is starting to grab national attention, but Cindy needs our support. We're asking moms (and dads, siblings, spouses and kids) from all across America to help send a message by signing our letter of support to Cindy. Will you sign?
A number of organizations are coming to her aid, including Code Pink and the American Friends Service Committee, and Fenton Communications, a progressive communications firm that’s sending volunteers to help her with press, and presumably protect her from piranhas like Bill O’Reilly.
But Joe Trippi reports that her condition is a bit shaky at the moment. While Clear Channel lays out the dead steers for those jolly Texans, she’s got a high fever and sore throat from camping out in the rain.
It's not enough for these chickenhawks to vilify actual war heroes, they now feel compelled to go after their mothers.
Bush won’t see her, naturally. How can he? His war is becoming more unpopular in the U.S. with each passing day. It’s topic A on the lips of ordinary people, corporation executives (except for those employing Cheney, Bush, and cronies, of course) and a growing number of military families.But say Bush did show up.
What would she ask him? She says, is he encouraging his daughters to enlist?
No shame is their middle name. G.W. No Shame Bush, Dick No Shame Cheney, Clear No Shame Channel Communications.
"Have you no shame?”
Clear Channel, the radio monopoly of mediocre music 24/7 on every station everywhere, is sponsoring an “anti-Cindy Sheehan” barbeque in Crawford, Texas.
Who is Cindy Sheehan, that she deserves such powerful scorn? Here’s a succinct description, courtesy of MoveOn: On April 4th last year, 24-year-old Army Specialist Casey Sheehan died in Iraq. This week, while President Bush vacations in Texas, Casey's mother, Cindy Sheehan, sits vigil outside the president's ranch. Cindy says that she won't leave until President Bush meets with her to discuss the war--even if it means spending all of August there. Cindy Sheehan was not an anti-war activist, but the loss of her son and the mounting evidence of deception by the Bush administration pushed her to speak out. While Cindy camps roadside in Texas, dozens of other military moms are flying to Texas to join her.
MoveOn continued: Her story is starting to grab national attention, but Cindy needs our support. We're asking moms (and dads, siblings, spouses and kids) from all across America to help send a message by signing our letter of support to Cindy. Will you sign?
A number of organizations are coming to her aid, including Code Pink and the American Friends Service Committee, and Fenton Communications, a progressive communications firm that’s sending volunteers to help her with press, and presumably protect her from piranhas like Bill O’Reilly.
But Joe Trippi reports that her condition is a bit shaky at the moment. While Clear Channel lays out the dead steers for those jolly Texans, she’s got a high fever and sore throat from camping out in the rain.
It's not enough for these chickenhawks to vilify actual war heroes, they now feel compelled to go after their mothers.
Bush won’t see her, naturally. How can he? His war is becoming more unpopular in the U.S. with each passing day. It’s topic A on the lips of ordinary people, corporation executives (except for those employing Cheney, Bush, and cronies, of course) and a growing number of military families.But say Bush did show up.
What would she ask him? She says, is he encouraging his daughters to enlist?
No shame is their middle name. G.W. No Shame Bush, Dick No Shame Cheney, Clear No Shame Channel Communications.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Voting Rights, the Perpetual Revolution
In Atlanta on Saturday, some 100,000 people marched and rallied to remember the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and to demand that provisions up for renewal be not only renewed but strengthened.
The rally,underreported as usual in the U.S. media but featured by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! Monday, came at a time when another underreported story emerged---written evidence that the Supreme Court candidate, John Roberts, was a vocal and active opponent of a vital interpretation of the act when it was questioned early in the Reagan administration.
"The 40th anniversary of this act comes amid the recent release of memos written by Supreme Court Justice nominee John Roberts from his days as an aide in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department. At the time the House had overwhelmingly passed new provisions strengthening the Voting Rights Act. The memos reveal that Roberts strongly advocated a policy that would curtail the reach of the law. The policy would have barred only voting rules that intentionally discriminated, as opposed to barring rules that have a discriminatory effect." Amy Goodman said, and then asked NAACP lawyer Debo Adegbile several questions about this.
Adegbile pointed to several lawsuits in Florida attacking at-large districting that “tend to submerge minority votes. In a winner-take-all majority-rule situation, if there are no districts to give effect to separate voices within a community, then minority votes are going to be submerged.” One lawsuit in St. Petersburg under the Voting Rights Act contends “that the at-large system in St. Petersburg has the result of discriminating against the city’s minority voters, and if they can make that proof, they prevail. Had John Roberts’ view of the world prevailed, they would have been required to show that the at-large system was intentionally designed to limit minority voters’ voices, and that, of course, for obvious reasons is a much higher threshold.”
Goodman asked about how other minorities are affected by the Act---a key point---and Adegbile pointed to a similar suit in Osceola Florida, which the Bush Justice Department itself has joined, alleging that Latino voters were having their votes submerged in exactly the same way.
“So what the Voting Rights Act is is an integrated minority protection system, and for that reason, all of the expiring provisions need to be renewed. And in the events in Atlanta, we saw people of all races and ethnicities coming together for the same purpose.”
This of course becomes more important as the US becomes more diverse. For now, however, it is still the African American leadership that is keeping this issue alive, partly by remembering its own history. So the rally was heavy with references to Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the martyrs of the Civil Rights 60s, as the march was led by Jesse Jackson and John Lewis.
But there are new issues within the issue, and again it is black leadership that is insisting that voter intimidation and election fraud not be forgotten, especially because virtually all of the proven, likely and alleged destruction of voting rights and the vote’s integrity were directed at keeping black voters from voting and having their votes counted.
And there was recognition that the emergence of anti-black black Republicans needs to be met head-on by a new generation of leaders of color.
“If we are to avoid the strange fruit of powerlessness, we have to pass the torch of leadership to a new generation of young, strong, uncompromising tree shakers,” said one of those emerging leaders, Rep. Cynthia McKinney. “…today we are here to demand our due: Life, liberty, and the right to vote on machines that we know will accurately count our vote. And on this, we will not be hoodwinked, snookered, bought out or even bushwhacked. “
For more on Democracy Now! interview
For a rundown on the voting rights provisions coming up for renewal, this Center for American Progress report
In Atlanta on Saturday, some 100,000 people marched and rallied to remember the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and to demand that provisions up for renewal be not only renewed but strengthened.
The rally,underreported as usual in the U.S. media but featured by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! Monday, came at a time when another underreported story emerged---written evidence that the Supreme Court candidate, John Roberts, was a vocal and active opponent of a vital interpretation of the act when it was questioned early in the Reagan administration.
"The 40th anniversary of this act comes amid the recent release of memos written by Supreme Court Justice nominee John Roberts from his days as an aide in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department. At the time the House had overwhelmingly passed new provisions strengthening the Voting Rights Act. The memos reveal that Roberts strongly advocated a policy that would curtail the reach of the law. The policy would have barred only voting rules that intentionally discriminated, as opposed to barring rules that have a discriminatory effect." Amy Goodman said, and then asked NAACP lawyer Debo Adegbile several questions about this.
Adegbile pointed to several lawsuits in Florida attacking at-large districting that “tend to submerge minority votes. In a winner-take-all majority-rule situation, if there are no districts to give effect to separate voices within a community, then minority votes are going to be submerged.” One lawsuit in St. Petersburg under the Voting Rights Act contends “that the at-large system in St. Petersburg has the result of discriminating against the city’s minority voters, and if they can make that proof, they prevail. Had John Roberts’ view of the world prevailed, they would have been required to show that the at-large system was intentionally designed to limit minority voters’ voices, and that, of course, for obvious reasons is a much higher threshold.”
Goodman asked about how other minorities are affected by the Act---a key point---and Adegbile pointed to a similar suit in Osceola Florida, which the Bush Justice Department itself has joined, alleging that Latino voters were having their votes submerged in exactly the same way.
“So what the Voting Rights Act is is an integrated minority protection system, and for that reason, all of the expiring provisions need to be renewed. And in the events in Atlanta, we saw people of all races and ethnicities coming together for the same purpose.”
This of course becomes more important as the US becomes more diverse. For now, however, it is still the African American leadership that is keeping this issue alive, partly by remembering its own history. So the rally was heavy with references to Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the martyrs of the Civil Rights 60s, as the march was led by Jesse Jackson and John Lewis.
But there are new issues within the issue, and again it is black leadership that is insisting that voter intimidation and election fraud not be forgotten, especially because virtually all of the proven, likely and alleged destruction of voting rights and the vote’s integrity were directed at keeping black voters from voting and having their votes counted.
And there was recognition that the emergence of anti-black black Republicans needs to be met head-on by a new generation of leaders of color.
“If we are to avoid the strange fruit of powerlessness, we have to pass the torch of leadership to a new generation of young, strong, uncompromising tree shakers,” said one of those emerging leaders, Rep. Cynthia McKinney. “…today we are here to demand our due: Life, liberty, and the right to vote on machines that we know will accurately count our vote. And on this, we will not be hoodwinked, snookered, bought out or even bushwhacked. “
For more on Democracy Now! interview
For a rundown on the voting rights provisions coming up for renewal, this Center for American Progress report
Peter Jennings
Since I haven’t watched network evening news programs regularly for some years now, it’s been awhile since I’ve thought about how important the presence of Peter Jennings was, especially in those many years I was not in Washington or New York or even Boston, and it was his voice and his personality that tempered and gave good weight to, for example, the depressing horrors of the Reagan decade, when the hopeful areas of American policy and culture were dismembered, and the politics and society that’s dominant today was rearing its young and already ugly head.
Peter Jennings was literate, measured and good natured. How intelligent he actually was mattered less than how intelligent he seemed. He was an advertisement that intelligence might still matter. If we would just join him in weathering the shitstorm.
Apparently he was that calm only on the air. When he watched TV, he screamed at what those idiots are saying just like the rest of us.
It really helped that he was Canadian.
He was one of a kind in what looks like the last generation of real broadcast journalists. First on television would be the Edward R. Murrow generation, trained in radio and on newspapers, reporting before and after and especially during World War II in Europe and Asia. Then younger members of that generation, like Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley, yielded to the next generation: Dan Rather, who was a Dallas reporter during the Kennedy assassination story, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings.
Although Jennings had a first run as a young anchor for the barely existing ABC network, he spent many years as an international correspondent before coming back to the big chair at the much bigger network.
He knew more about international affairs than a couple of presidents I could name. If he couldn’t stop the current TV news deterioration and gallop through decadence to irrelevance, he could at least slow it down. His name appeared in this silly little space last week as the only person who insisted on reporting on the genocide in Sudan (according to the Washington Post columnist quoted), and since he’s been absent due to the lung cancer that killed him, that coverage has disappeared.
It's worth pointing out that none of the giants of either Jennings' or Cronkite's or Murrow's generation went to J-school. Now the country is crawling with J-schools, and every tinpot paper on the planet requires a degree from one, and for what? Can they write, can they evaluate, do they know anything or care about anything, what do they learn there?
To add fuel to this fire, Peter Jennings never went to college at all. The insecurity of how he felt about this, together with his great curiosity and immense competitive spirit (if he'd ever gotten into a game of Monopoly or Scrabble with Michael Jordan he might still be alive, because neither of them would leave before they won) made him uniquely suited for excelling at the job for which he had all the other skills and attributes.
An ABC producer appearing on Charlie Rose insisted that Jennings left a legacy in the people he trained. I hope so, just as I dearly hope Bill Moyers has. Unfortunately I don’t see much evidence that anyone with the combination of their standards, skills and power has come along in the next generation.
CBS has gone to someone even older than Rather, NBC has an anchor who so far seems more like the perfect actor to play an anchor, and nobody knows what’s going to happen at ABC.
ABC’s producer said that Jennings wouldn’t let ABC lower its standards too much, and this helped the other networks maintain theirs. If so, now we’ll see what they learned, what they’re really made of. And I guess I do mean we, since I got rid of the cable news stations, and if I ever go to TV for news again (besides PBS, C-Span and especially the Democracy Now! broadcasts carried on our public access channel) I’ll have those three networks to deal with again.
Several guests on the Charlie Rose program said that Peter Jennings was especially happy the last year or so of his life. He was only 67, but he saw and heard more than most of us ever will. He could talk to anyone he wanted (although, someone said, at a party he was more likely to talk to the insecure teenager or the neglected spouse that any of the celebrities who wanted nothing more than to talk to him) , and he did the work he loved. He had a year of newly wedded bliss, and even reconciled as friends with his ex-wife, even after a painful divorce. That's good. Especially for all those years that he was some kind of lifeline to sanity, I salute him.
Since I haven’t watched network evening news programs regularly for some years now, it’s been awhile since I’ve thought about how important the presence of Peter Jennings was, especially in those many years I was not in Washington or New York or even Boston, and it was his voice and his personality that tempered and gave good weight to, for example, the depressing horrors of the Reagan decade, when the hopeful areas of American policy and culture were dismembered, and the politics and society that’s dominant today was rearing its young and already ugly head.
Peter Jennings was literate, measured and good natured. How intelligent he actually was mattered less than how intelligent he seemed. He was an advertisement that intelligence might still matter. If we would just join him in weathering the shitstorm.
Apparently he was that calm only on the air. When he watched TV, he screamed at what those idiots are saying just like the rest of us.
It really helped that he was Canadian.
He was one of a kind in what looks like the last generation of real broadcast journalists. First on television would be the Edward R. Murrow generation, trained in radio and on newspapers, reporting before and after and especially during World War II in Europe and Asia. Then younger members of that generation, like Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley, yielded to the next generation: Dan Rather, who was a Dallas reporter during the Kennedy assassination story, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings.
Although Jennings had a first run as a young anchor for the barely existing ABC network, he spent many years as an international correspondent before coming back to the big chair at the much bigger network.
He knew more about international affairs than a couple of presidents I could name. If he couldn’t stop the current TV news deterioration and gallop through decadence to irrelevance, he could at least slow it down. His name appeared in this silly little space last week as the only person who insisted on reporting on the genocide in Sudan (according to the Washington Post columnist quoted), and since he’s been absent due to the lung cancer that killed him, that coverage has disappeared.
It's worth pointing out that none of the giants of either Jennings' or Cronkite's or Murrow's generation went to J-school. Now the country is crawling with J-schools, and every tinpot paper on the planet requires a degree from one, and for what? Can they write, can they evaluate, do they know anything or care about anything, what do they learn there?
To add fuel to this fire, Peter Jennings never went to college at all. The insecurity of how he felt about this, together with his great curiosity and immense competitive spirit (if he'd ever gotten into a game of Monopoly or Scrabble with Michael Jordan he might still be alive, because neither of them would leave before they won) made him uniquely suited for excelling at the job for which he had all the other skills and attributes.
An ABC producer appearing on Charlie Rose insisted that Jennings left a legacy in the people he trained. I hope so, just as I dearly hope Bill Moyers has. Unfortunately I don’t see much evidence that anyone with the combination of their standards, skills and power has come along in the next generation.
CBS has gone to someone even older than Rather, NBC has an anchor who so far seems more like the perfect actor to play an anchor, and nobody knows what’s going to happen at ABC.
ABC’s producer said that Jennings wouldn’t let ABC lower its standards too much, and this helped the other networks maintain theirs. If so, now we’ll see what they learned, what they’re really made of. And I guess I do mean we, since I got rid of the cable news stations, and if I ever go to TV for news again (besides PBS, C-Span and especially the Democracy Now! broadcasts carried on our public access channel) I’ll have those three networks to deal with again.
Several guests on the Charlie Rose program said that Peter Jennings was especially happy the last year or so of his life. He was only 67, but he saw and heard more than most of us ever will. He could talk to anyone he wanted (although, someone said, at a party he was more likely to talk to the insecure teenager or the neglected spouse that any of the celebrities who wanted nothing more than to talk to him) , and he did the work he loved. He had a year of newly wedded bliss, and even reconciled as friends with his ex-wife, even after a painful divorce. That's good. Especially for all those years that he was some kind of lifeline to sanity, I salute him.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Big Science O-de-lay-e-hoo: A Rant for 1945-2005
When science is mentioned around here, it’s usually to defend it against those who would deny or pervert it. Those acts obviously have terrible consequences. But on the anniversary of Hiroshima, it ought to be noted that science has its own problems that have little to do with fundamentalists or the editing of inconvenient scientific findings in the White House.
Big Science, as Laurie Anderson sang about it, has much to answer for. Most science in this country is done either for the Pentagon or big corporations, and very little is done either in a disinterested search for knowledge or to directly benefit the public good.
Research scientists search for weapons-oriented breakthroughs, for genetically altered seeds that agribusiness can patent and use to replace natural ones, and formulas for pharmaceutical companies to patent that mimic the natural medicines that other companies will destroy with the defoliants their scientists devise.
It goes beyond scientific research to practice. The persons of science most people actually see are doctors, who in the U.S. are becoming wholly owned subsidiaries of managed care and pharmaceutical companies. Pharmacological companies pay an average of $13,000 in gifts and perks to each psychiatrist in the American Psychiatric Association, every year. Although pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than research, they dominate what research is done on the safety and effectiveness of the powerful drugs they sell at inflated prices. It’s no mystery why psychiatry is drug dependent, and no wonder that the main studies showing dangerous effects of antidepressants on adolescents and children were done in Italy and the UK.
These are problems that require political solutions, and more leadership and resistance by scientists. But there are others that require that science rethink not only its priorities but its conceptual framework.
Some scientists are doing just that. They recognize the benefits of reductionist science, of taking things apart and isolating the simplest cause and effect relationships. It has allowed science and technology to do many things. But they recognize the limitations that are fast becoming crucial.
Reductionism is science for the hand, for doing. Advanced physics and biology, some environmental and climate science, the working theories of chaos and complexity, all point to the limitations of a reductionist framework in understanding how life, the universe and everything actually work. Science has come up against the limits of reductionism. A better understanding of the interrelationships is needed, not only to continue scientific inquiry, but to know what to do and how to do it.
Because we are also coming up against other limits—our ability to sustain civilization with the kinds of energy we use, with the waste and pollution and damage we create. Because it absolves itself from the consequences it enables, science is also part of the problem. The fear of science, like the image of the mad scientist, is not all based on ignorance.
Reductionism thrives on the myth of value-free science. The value-free myth helped science advance when used as a bulwark against preconceptions based on various prejudices, primarily promulgated by viceroys of dominant religious organizations. “Look at the evidence”---that was the value-free cry. “Don’t look at doctrine. And don’t ask us about the purpose or the end product. We’re just trying to find out how things really are.”
This particular war between science and religious doctrines is never over, as everyone knows, and so Galileo morphs into Darwin, the Monkey Trial and Intelligent Design. That’s part of what keeps science and its supporters so defensive when anybody questioning anything about science or how it’s being done.
Science should not have to answer for how its appropriated and perversely misused. Darwin’s theory of evolution was used to support claims that robber barons were acting for the good of the species by exploiting the poor, that science was mocking religion and that everything humanity does is right because it’s all the progress of evolution.
Scientists don’t always know how their knowledge will be used. Even many inventors had no idea what their inventions would be used for. Thomas Edison thought that the phonograph would be great for preserving oratory. Alexander Graham Bell thought people would use the telephone to listen to opera from far away. Marconi believed he had invented a wireless telegraph, and the capability of his radio to broadcast sound was a nuisance and defect. When Louis Lumiere invented a prototype for motion pictures, the cinematograph, he believed it was “a scientific curiosity with no commercial possibilities.”
But if your science is designing weapons, you cannot be shocked and dismayed when your science kills people.
The truth is that science never was value-free. It mostly served the state, very often in researching and designing weapons and defenses. Later it served both states and corporations in dominating trade and looting distant lands and slaughtering their populations, with methods and technologies for navigation, transportation and of course, killing. Most advances in science and technology since the 19th century were accomplished for industry and war departments.
As for disinterested search for the truth, anyone who observes how science actually works knows that scientists often resist new theories, interpretations and even evidence, to protect their own reputations and turf. That may simply be human, but the holier than thou platitudes of scientists, obviously false, combined with a defensiveness bordering on paranoia against anything that even questions reductionist dogma, often has them attacking allies as enemies, making them even more vulnerable to those who truly threaten the foundations of science.
But the worst effect of Big Science and its hypocrisy is that it won’t take responsibility for its actions. The reductionist quest makes that possible, if reductionism is taken to be the whole of science---the only way to knowledge. Then science cuts itself off from the very world it is supposed to be revealing. It refuses to see that the interrelationships are as important than the parts, and that in context, they can be---as they are now---more important.
Big Science can be Big Science because it sees things only through a microscope. The microscope of reductionism and narrow expertise sees no world around it, and it does not see time. It does not, most crucially, see the future.
It does not take into consideration the future effects of its present actions. It does not look at the web of relationships that define life and reality.
This is at the heart of the terrible conflicts many of the Los Alamos scientists felt. They were excited by the work, and each small discovery. They cheered when the Bomb worked. But they knew that they cheered partly because they weren’t going to lose their jobs, or suffer a decline in reputation, because they’d spent millions of dollars on a dud. Instead they were going to be declared heroes and geniuses.
Many of the same scientists who cheered wildly when they heard about Hiroshima quickly signed a petition stating that the Bomb should never be used against people again. Many felt it was wrong to ever use it, especially after the threat many had signed up to counter---that Germany would get the Bomb---was gone before their first test.
But the military was paying for their research, was paying their salaries, and they left the decision of what to do with their science to their bosses.
My purpose here is not to get into an argument about whether dropping the Bomb on Hiroshima was justified or not. My purpose here is to say that this was a defining moment for science in our time. It showed that the detachment of scientists from the effects of their work could end human civilization, essentially in one bright afternoon.
Now we're seeing that the effects of all that science for the past two centuries is poisoning us, killing most of the higher life forms on the planet, and possibly sending a great deal of the planet into a state only a dinosaur might recognize, at least briefly.
But science itself since Hiroshima has found it necessary to look beyond reductionism and the value-free myth. Quantum physics alone has shattered the illusion of reality as mechanistic, whether that mechanism is likened to a clock, a telephone system or a computer.
Matter itself may be a series of relationships. The elements of the world that we know sustains us physically is certainly dependent on interrelationships. One of the most important is one of the simplest: what happens in the future depends in large part on what is done in the present. Science may need a new conceptual framework, a new definition of itself, so science acknowledges that interrelationships are vital, values them, and acts accordingly.
As part of the process of getting to that new framework, Big Science needs to examine itself, and then look around at what it has done and what it is not doing. And what it should be doing, right now, for the future, if there is to be any.
When science is mentioned around here, it’s usually to defend it against those who would deny or pervert it. Those acts obviously have terrible consequences. But on the anniversary of Hiroshima, it ought to be noted that science has its own problems that have little to do with fundamentalists or the editing of inconvenient scientific findings in the White House.
Big Science, as Laurie Anderson sang about it, has much to answer for. Most science in this country is done either for the Pentagon or big corporations, and very little is done either in a disinterested search for knowledge or to directly benefit the public good.
Research scientists search for weapons-oriented breakthroughs, for genetically altered seeds that agribusiness can patent and use to replace natural ones, and formulas for pharmaceutical companies to patent that mimic the natural medicines that other companies will destroy with the defoliants their scientists devise.
It goes beyond scientific research to practice. The persons of science most people actually see are doctors, who in the U.S. are becoming wholly owned subsidiaries of managed care and pharmaceutical companies. Pharmacological companies pay an average of $13,000 in gifts and perks to each psychiatrist in the American Psychiatric Association, every year. Although pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than research, they dominate what research is done on the safety and effectiveness of the powerful drugs they sell at inflated prices. It’s no mystery why psychiatry is drug dependent, and no wonder that the main studies showing dangerous effects of antidepressants on adolescents and children were done in Italy and the UK.
These are problems that require political solutions, and more leadership and resistance by scientists. But there are others that require that science rethink not only its priorities but its conceptual framework.
Some scientists are doing just that. They recognize the benefits of reductionist science, of taking things apart and isolating the simplest cause and effect relationships. It has allowed science and technology to do many things. But they recognize the limitations that are fast becoming crucial.
Reductionism is science for the hand, for doing. Advanced physics and biology, some environmental and climate science, the working theories of chaos and complexity, all point to the limitations of a reductionist framework in understanding how life, the universe and everything actually work. Science has come up against the limits of reductionism. A better understanding of the interrelationships is needed, not only to continue scientific inquiry, but to know what to do and how to do it.
Because we are also coming up against other limits—our ability to sustain civilization with the kinds of energy we use, with the waste and pollution and damage we create. Because it absolves itself from the consequences it enables, science is also part of the problem. The fear of science, like the image of the mad scientist, is not all based on ignorance.
Reductionism thrives on the myth of value-free science. The value-free myth helped science advance when used as a bulwark against preconceptions based on various prejudices, primarily promulgated by viceroys of dominant religious organizations. “Look at the evidence”---that was the value-free cry. “Don’t look at doctrine. And don’t ask us about the purpose or the end product. We’re just trying to find out how things really are.”
This particular war between science and religious doctrines is never over, as everyone knows, and so Galileo morphs into Darwin, the Monkey Trial and Intelligent Design. That’s part of what keeps science and its supporters so defensive when anybody questioning anything about science or how it’s being done.
Science should not have to answer for how its appropriated and perversely misused. Darwin’s theory of evolution was used to support claims that robber barons were acting for the good of the species by exploiting the poor, that science was mocking religion and that everything humanity does is right because it’s all the progress of evolution.
Scientists don’t always know how their knowledge will be used. Even many inventors had no idea what their inventions would be used for. Thomas Edison thought that the phonograph would be great for preserving oratory. Alexander Graham Bell thought people would use the telephone to listen to opera from far away. Marconi believed he had invented a wireless telegraph, and the capability of his radio to broadcast sound was a nuisance and defect. When Louis Lumiere invented a prototype for motion pictures, the cinematograph, he believed it was “a scientific curiosity with no commercial possibilities.”
But if your science is designing weapons, you cannot be shocked and dismayed when your science kills people.
The truth is that science never was value-free. It mostly served the state, very often in researching and designing weapons and defenses. Later it served both states and corporations in dominating trade and looting distant lands and slaughtering their populations, with methods and technologies for navigation, transportation and of course, killing. Most advances in science and technology since the 19th century were accomplished for industry and war departments.
As for disinterested search for the truth, anyone who observes how science actually works knows that scientists often resist new theories, interpretations and even evidence, to protect their own reputations and turf. That may simply be human, but the holier than thou platitudes of scientists, obviously false, combined with a defensiveness bordering on paranoia against anything that even questions reductionist dogma, often has them attacking allies as enemies, making them even more vulnerable to those who truly threaten the foundations of science.
But the worst effect of Big Science and its hypocrisy is that it won’t take responsibility for its actions. The reductionist quest makes that possible, if reductionism is taken to be the whole of science---the only way to knowledge. Then science cuts itself off from the very world it is supposed to be revealing. It refuses to see that the interrelationships are as important than the parts, and that in context, they can be---as they are now---more important.
Big Science can be Big Science because it sees things only through a microscope. The microscope of reductionism and narrow expertise sees no world around it, and it does not see time. It does not, most crucially, see the future.
It does not take into consideration the future effects of its present actions. It does not look at the web of relationships that define life and reality.
This is at the heart of the terrible conflicts many of the Los Alamos scientists felt. They were excited by the work, and each small discovery. They cheered when the Bomb worked. But they knew that they cheered partly because they weren’t going to lose their jobs, or suffer a decline in reputation, because they’d spent millions of dollars on a dud. Instead they were going to be declared heroes and geniuses.
Many of the same scientists who cheered wildly when they heard about Hiroshima quickly signed a petition stating that the Bomb should never be used against people again. Many felt it was wrong to ever use it, especially after the threat many had signed up to counter---that Germany would get the Bomb---was gone before their first test.
But the military was paying for their research, was paying their salaries, and they left the decision of what to do with their science to their bosses.
My purpose here is not to get into an argument about whether dropping the Bomb on Hiroshima was justified or not. My purpose here is to say that this was a defining moment for science in our time. It showed that the detachment of scientists from the effects of their work could end human civilization, essentially in one bright afternoon.
Now we're seeing that the effects of all that science for the past two centuries is poisoning us, killing most of the higher life forms on the planet, and possibly sending a great deal of the planet into a state only a dinosaur might recognize, at least briefly.
But science itself since Hiroshima has found it necessary to look beyond reductionism and the value-free myth. Quantum physics alone has shattered the illusion of reality as mechanistic, whether that mechanism is likened to a clock, a telephone system or a computer.
Matter itself may be a series of relationships. The elements of the world that we know sustains us physically is certainly dependent on interrelationships. One of the most important is one of the simplest: what happens in the future depends in large part on what is done in the present. Science may need a new conceptual framework, a new definition of itself, so science acknowledges that interrelationships are vital, values them, and acts accordingly.
As part of the process of getting to that new framework, Big Science needs to examine itself, and then look around at what it has done and what it is not doing. And what it should be doing, right now, for the future, if there is to be any.
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