Ask any group of common American citizens about what they think about evolution and the odds are quite high that 46% of those polled will completely reject the tenets and existence of evolution. In fact, some of those polled may be so bold as to indicate that they believe that the facts for evolution espoused by Darwin and his later day followers make this group of scientific eggheads hard boiled and tools of the devil.
Roughly the same sized group of contemporary Americans, I'm not talking about those who lived sometime in the early nineteenth century, would also contend that the Earth is actually less than 10,000 years old. If you will remember from an earlier posting I made this week the actual age of the Earth is really closer to 4 billions years old.
Why are so many people so dumb one might wonder? Well there's plenty of blame to go around and a lot of it has to do with the way science is ignored by the popular media. No. I'm not talking about that next shuttle mission launch; that's important and newsworthy because you never know when one of those overused old workhorse shuttles might explode on launch or upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere - that's your media in action; covering the spectacle while ignoring the every-day occurrences of science and its intertwining with the strength of our fledgling democracy.I'm talking about the plain fact that over the past several decades, weekly science sections in daily newspapers has shrunken by an astonishing 2/3 of what they once were. Current debates over such significant topics as global climate change have been shifted from a discussion of scientific facts and theories and place into the arena of political bigotry. In addition the voice of scientists have been muted by those of popular religious leaders and opinion makers, groups who do not rely on scientific findings to base their views but on the means and methods of propaganda to support their agendas.
An important insight into the morass in discussing scientific subjects was predicted in the famous 1959 Rede lecture at Cambridge University by C. P. Snow, a scientifically trained writer who uncovered the existence of the competition between "two cultures" that was distinguishable by a "gulf of mutual incomprehension" that pitted humanists against scientists. As the holders of power and the decision makers in western society humanists held sway over the way science would be viewed. In comparison to the humanists, the members of the scientific community were marginalized and held little prestige; they were the 'specialists' who provided the means, such as nuclear weapons for the humanists to be the agenda setters. Meanwhile, the humanists had little practice understanding of what the scientists were capable of producing; they only knew that what ever might be produced could and would be put to use in the plans the humanists had assembled. With numerous threats facing humankind, from climate change;
to pandemics; and the spread of nuclear weapons; each of which are laden with scientific fundamentals that few if many non-scientists understand.
What is the connection to democracy you ask? It lies with the free and unimpinged flow of information and knowledge. The simple matter of the fact is that we live in an age increasingly dominated by science and scientific principles which constitute nothing but meaningless jargon not only for most of the population but also for our political, cultural, and legal gatekeepers as well as the leaders of capitalist enterprises. it is time we integrate a much more precise and meaningful understanding of the necessary integration of the scientific understanding of human affairs as an integral part of civic discourse. In other words the construction of a civics that welds a scientific understanding of worldly affairs with democratic principles that involve all citizens in this undertaking.
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