scientists in my family). That said...
I have the uncomfortable feeling that the rightwing political assault on science and rational thinking, and also on humanism and our Enlightenment heritage in general, may be pushing people to take sides in a matter that really shouldn't have "sides."
I began thinking about this problem long ago, after reading Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." (--saw the show long ago, but didn't really catch some things until I read and thought about the actual text). Sagan had a very great distaste for the Pythagoreans and the Neoplatonists, because these early philosophers were, in his view, "mixed up" with mysticism (they thought that numbers and certain shapes had mystical significance, and held certain things as "secrets" from the common herd of humanity, etc, etc.). And he had special venom for astrologers--ancient and modern.
But it seems to me that Sagan misses something rather big: that astrology is the MOTHER of astronomy, just as herbology (which also has mystical elements) is the MOTHER of modern pharmaceutical science and medicine. In fact, all the sciences can be traced back to some early, shamanistic, magical-mystical human craving for understanding and for connectedness to the world and its phenomena.
Astrology--the desire of us humans to place ourselves into some kind of connection with the vast starry cosmos--CAME FIRST, and the methods of astronomy--detailed study of the patterns in the sky, and understanding what the objects in the sky are--CAME SECOND. Probably one of the first insights of early astrologers (the first astronomers) was the variety in the movements of sun and moon, and their relationship to ocean tides, weather, good planting times, the mating patterns/behavior of wildlife, and other matters of immediate concern to humans. They--the smartest humans, the shamans and the astrologers--NOTICED these relationships, began to REMEMBER them and pass that knowledge forward, and eventually started creating calendars (notations) of repeated patterns--in the sky, and on earth--so that they could inform others of what was coming and plan accordingly. (Time to build your hut, winter storms coming; the salmon will be arriving soon--the Sun God says so...)
There was no such thing as "pure science"--as a concept--EXCEPT for the "pure science" that occurs when a human being simply observes a physical phenomenon, or "plays" with objects (tosses a feather in the air and watches it float down to the ground). There was "pure science" in actuality--or else we would never have learned anything--but not in concept, as a pursuit that is strictly apart from who we are, and how we fit into everything else.
Everything was connected to everything else, with humans obviously caught somewhere in "Middle Earth" between the grand forces that literally determine our fate, for instance, whether we and our tribe are going to starve to death--the blazing sun, the waxing moon, the thunder gods--and our own clearly limited power (as compared, say, to the thunder gods), and the dexterity and intelligence that we are born with, and with which we exert what will we are able to, on things and people.
It seems to me quite natural that humans would believe themselves to be part and parcel of everything around them--dependent upon, and part of, the plants, the wildlife, the seasons and the heavenly bodies. Science began as a medium--an arbiter--among these forces. It was not abstract, and not particularly rational (although based on observation), and it tended to be both practical (how things work; what works) and comforting (if you put this poultice on your belly, and drink this tea, the Moon Goddess will give you an easy birth--because THESE ARE HER SPECIAL HERBS AND GIFTS TO WOMEN).
The personification of the powers around us just naturally occurs to us. What evolutionary purpose does this belief in "the powers" serve? Why did/do those humans survive and procreate who believed in such "powers"? Who knows? But the two things went together: our ability to understand and utilize scientific information, and our belief in "gods," evolved together, and were related to one another, and this lasted for thousands and thousands and thousands of years of human existence, before anybody thought of the notion of "pure science" or strictly rational thought.
For thousands of years, ASTROLOGERS perfected their understanding of the heavenly bodies--with incredible accuracy, given their "irrational" beliefs--before it occurred to anyone that the sky should be studied for its own sake. The purpose of such study, in ancient times (and not so long ago), was to predict and control events on earth that affected humans.
It's easy to despise most manifestations of modern astrology. It all seems so silly to us (or to many of us) now. But are we missing something big in disdaining it? The origins of our thought. Our deepest desires. How things really work in the vast, vast, mysterious universe. And how our own minds work. And are we suffering from an overly-rational evolutionary side-track, by insisting on the hard line division between science and religion (including mysticism, irrational, intuitive insights, and all kinds of "alternative" experiences)?
Also, is it not true that science has become our god and our religion, with scientists as our high priests, to whom we give too much faith? "Pure science" has created some damnable problems for us--nuclear weapons, for instance, and pervasive, planet-killing pollution. Shouldn't science--as with capitalism--be strongly tempered by ETHICS, SPIRITUAL INSIGHT, WISDOM, and COMPASSION--and not allowed to run rampant on its own? By pure rational terms, we should be euthanizing half the population of the earth as unfit (--just as by pure capitalist terms, we should provide no communal, consensus supports for workers or the poor or the old; use them up, throw them away).
In this debate about evolution vs. "intelligent design," I wonder if we can't make room for some broader thoughts. For instance, I don't like the way science is often taught--albeit by inferior teachers, but there are a lot of them--as a GIVEN KNOWLEDGE SET, not as a grand, ten million-year EXPERIMENT in figuring things out.
I certainly don't think that anybody's god should imposed on children or anyone else. And I know the history of religious persecution very well, so I understand the absolute necessity of a secular state--at least at this point in our evolution, with Inquisitions and witchburnings, and the Catholic-Protestant wars, not that far behind us--and most especially today, with rightwing fascists and war profiteers trying to stir up another Christian-Islamic war.
But--if you could put this rightwing assault on science aside--wouldn't it be best NOT TO *TEACH* either thing--evolution or "intelligent design"--as some sort of rock solid certainties that all must choose between, and then believe in? Why not, instead, GUIDE students through WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT these problems, so that they can REACH THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS? Maybe some genius among them will one day overturn Darwin? Or take Darwin's data and insights (and those of others), and make a great leap forward, far beyond Darwin to some currently unimaginable reality about life on earth?
If we force-feed given scientific "authority," we make the biggest mistake in the entire history of science--that brilliant new insights get ignored and scorned, because they very often come from left-field, from rebels, from people willing to toss it all over, and re-think everything from a completely unorthodox angle.
And, in that respect, isn't the real question WHY humans NEED, why humans DESIRE and why humans PERCEIVE "intelligent design"? (We DO, you know--every one of us, all the time. It seems fundamental to how our brains work--whether it leads us to belief in God or not.) And, the corollary, how do our needs, desires and perceptions color how we interpret physical phenomena? (There is a fascinating book by Stephen Jay Gould about human hubris--of the Victorian kind--in interpreting evolution as "leading to us," rather than having been quite a scattershot and wild plethora of life--as if Nature were inventing every imaginable possibility--that only RESULTED in us, with our ancestral worms just making it through some ancient planetary catastrophe "by the skin of our teeth," so to speak. No design (toward "higher beings"). Just chance. A very humbling and thought-provoking book--although I don't quite buy the whole theory; it's may be too grand for the limited data that we have.*)
Just as with Bush and his false and narrow political alternatives--"you're either with me or you love terrsts"--the rightwing may be leading us down a garden path of LIMITED alternatives in how we study--and how we teach the study (and what we include in the study)--of physical phenomena.
And could it be, also, that the rightwing fanatics who are leading this campaign are actually--inadvertently--pointing to something we all need to think about: that our rationalist, materialist, capitalist society is EMPTY of meaning; that it leads to ugly shopping malls, and frankenfoods, and polluted air, and traffic jams, and personal alienation, and nukes to "protect" all our meaningless goods, and huge military expenditures to insure our extraction (or the extraction by global corporate predators) of all the last natural resources of the earth?
A longing for meaning. A spiritual longing. A desire for a higher sense of purpose. And a hunger for love and compassion.
Odd, to be describing what rightwingers might want in this way--they so often seem stupid and ugly and repressive. But they, too, are human, and maybe aren't so gifted as the rest of us at expressing what they want (or even realizing what it is).
Once again, I understand the FEAR of rightwing repression. It is a reality-based fear, if there ever was one--such repression has an ugly and scary history. And I'm not saying we shouldn't defend science--and also teachers and students--against rightwing propaganda. I'm just trying to prevent this discussion from being too limited. And Nashville_brook's "right-brain" post--all this free association (however it was meant)--jiggled my mind and got me to thinking about it all.
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A good review of Gould's book, "Wonderful Life" (by Kurt P.Wise):
http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or131/wise.htm"To conclude, as Gould does, that man is "...a wildly improbable evolutionary event..." (p. 291), "...a detail, not a purpose..." (p. 291), and "...a cosmic accident..." (p. 44) is disconcerting to some, but not to Gould. To him, release from any purpose is 'exhilarating' as it also releases any responsibility to any other, "...offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our chosen way" (p. 323). If ever evolutionary theory has been elaborated to the point of complete incompatibility with a Christian world view, it is by the pen of Stephen Jay Gould in this, his most recent tome."
(Note: I don't know if I agree with the reviewer's conclusion, or with Gould's, for that matter. Gould does conclude on a positive note about the absolute glory of freedom from all "manifest destiny." Nobody "chose" us. We are here. Make of it what we will. That is an extraordinarily wise way to think about things--it can help you be more creative, and more responsible--the ultimate responsibility, it's ALL up to us, quite literally, whether we create a good society or a living hell, and whether we do something with our life or waste it. However, I just think there are still too many unknowns for such a big conclusion. The universe is H-------------U-------------G-------------E! And we understand it about as well as ants in an ant colony understand the earth. Not very well. We have also cut off our "right brains" from our "left brains." Real understanding may not be--in fact is not very likely to be--limited to what we consider rational thought and hard data (of which very little is available to us, in any case). And, finally, Christian theology at least teaches "free will"--total, absolute free will, to choose good or evil. Some Christians may not act accordingly, but the teaching is there and it is fundamental. The reviewer is wrong that Gould's theory is "completely incompatible" with the Christian world view. It's a great book, though!)
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