{"id":42407,"date":"2023-02-28T21:29:02","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T22:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/?p=42407"},"modified":"2023-02-28T22:36:37","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T22:36:37","slug":"national-science-day-2023restoring-sciences-place-in-society-will-help-us-resolve-the-big-debates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/2023\/02\/28\/national-science-day-2023restoring-sciences-place-in-society-will-help-us-resolve-the-big-debates\/","title":{"rendered":"National Science Day 2023:Restoring science\u2019s place in society will help us resolve the big\u00a0debates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tom McLeish<\/a>, Durham University<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

In the early days of independent India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said, \u201cIt is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty \u2026 of a rich country inhabited by starving people.\u201d Would any head of state today voice this view?<\/p>\n

A 2013 poll<\/a> recorded that only 36% of Americans had \u201ca lot\u201d of trust that the information they get from scientists is accurate and reliable. High-profile leaders, especially on the political right<\/a>, have increasingly chosen to undermine conclusions of scientific consensus. The flash-points tend to be the \u201ctroubled technologies\u201d \u2013 those that seem to threaten our delicate relationship with nature \u2013 climate change, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), genetic therapy and geo-engineering.<\/p>\n

The polarisation in these public debates constitutes an implicit threat to the quality of decisions that we must make if we are to ensure the future well-being of our planet and our species. When political colour trumps evidence-based science, we are in trouble.<\/p>\n

Could it be that this increasingly dangerous ambivalence towards science in politics is related to our continued misgivings over its cultural role and status? \u201cScience is not with us an object of contemplation,\u201d French historian Jacques Barzun complained in 1964. This is still true. Science does not figure as much a cultural possession in our media and education as does music, theatre or art. Yet history tells us that curiosity about the natural world and our desire to conquer it are as old as any other aspect of human culture.<\/p>\n

Ancient middle-eastern \u201cwisdom literature\u201d, the Epicureans\u2019 atomic notions and Plato\u2019s geometric concepts, the developing genre of the De Rerum Natura<\/i> (On the Nature of Things) throughout the Middle Ages \u2013 these tell a long story in which modern science constitutes the current chapter rather than a discontinuous departure.<\/p>\n

The perception that science lacks such cultural embedding, however, was highlighted in a recent study<\/a> of public reaction to nanotechnologies in the European Union. The project identified strong \u201cancient narratives\u201d at play in discussions ostensibly about technological risk. \u201cBe careful what you wish for\u201d, or \u201cnature is sacred\u201d were the underlying drivers of objection, ineffectually addressed by a scientific weighing of hazard analysis alone. Opponents were just talking past each other, for there was no scaffold of ancient narrative for science itself. We have forgotten what science is for.<\/p>\n

To unearth a narrative of purpose beneath science, we cannot avoid drawing on religious heritage for at least anthropological and historical reasons. To restore faith in science, we cannot bypass the understanding of the relationship of faith with science. Here we are not helped by the current oppositional framing of the \u201cscience and religion\u201d question, where the discussion seems to be dominated by the loudest voices rather than the most pressing questions.<\/p>\n

The language we use can also colour our conclusions. \u201cScience\u201d originates from the Latin scio<\/i> (I know) claiming very different values than the older name of \u201cnatural philosophy\u201d with Greek connotations that substitute knowledge-claims for a \u201clove of wisdom of nature\u201d. Wisdom, like faith, is a word not commonly associated with science, but which might do much for our restorative task if it were. The most powerfully articulated stirrings of desire to comprehend nature are found, after all, in ancient literature on wisdom.<\/p>\n

In a new book published this month, Faith and Wisdom in Science<\/a>, I have tried to draw together the modern need for a cultural underpinning narrative for science that recognises its difficulties and uncertainties, with an exploration of ancient wisdom tradition. It examines, for example, current attempts to comprehend the science of randomness in granular media and chaos in juxtaposition with a scientist\u2019s reading of the achingly beautiful nature poetry in the Book of Job.<\/p>\n

It is salutary to be reminded that most Biblical nature literature and many creation stories are more concerned with cosmical loose ends, the chaos of flood and wind, than the neat and formalised account of Genesis, with its developed six-day structure and gracefully liturgical pattern. So rather than oppose theology and science, the book attempts to derive what a theology of science might bring to the cultural question of where science belongs in today\u2019s society.<\/p>\n

The conclusion of this exploration surprised me. The strong motif that emerges is the idea of reconciliation of a broken human relationship with nature. Science has the potential to replace ignorance and fear of a world that can harm us and that we also can harm, by a relationship of understanding and care, where the foolishness of thoughtless exploitation is replaced by the wisdom of engagement.<\/p>\n

This is neither a \u201ctechnical fix\u201d nor a \u201cwithdrawal from the wild\u201d \u2013 two equally unworkable alternatives criticised by French anthropologist Bruno Latour. His hunch is that religious material might point the way to a practical alternative begins to look well-founded. Nor is the story of science interpreted as the healing of a broken relationship confined to the political level \u2013 it has personal consequences too for the way human individuals live in a material world.<\/p>\n

American author George Steiner once wrote, \u201cOnly art can go some way towards making accessible, towards waking into some measure of communicability, the sheer inhuman otherness of matter.\u201d Perhaps science can do that, too. If it can, it would mean that science, far from irreconcilable with religion, is a profoundly religious activity itself.<\/p>\n

\n

Tom McLeish<\/a>, Professor of Physics and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Durham University<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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