My research sponsor in the physics department of Columbia University was a famous Italian visiting professor with an abundance of Latin charm and temperament. What overwhelmed this naive graduate student was Gilberto Bernardini's sense of perpetual wonder at nature and at mankind's efforts to accommodate to nature. He would enter a dark lab and flick the light switch, changing darkness to brilliant light five or six times, and say: "Fantastico!"
That we had learned to turn night into day thanks to Michael Faraday's discovery of electricity in 1820 was a never-ending miracle to Gilberto.
This sense of wonder is found naturally in children. Anyone who has brought up a child is moved by that child's innate curiosity and desire to learn the world. This lust for understanding is, unfortunately, not shared by most adults. Love, joy, passion, curiosity, even humor are experienced by other species (including my standard poodle), but a sense of wonder is uniquely human and to deny it must be a profound deprivation.
Our need to understand is essential for us to run our own lives. Important decisions have to be made about how our food is grown, how we treat diseases and how those treatments are developed, the types of equipment we use and the dangers they may pose, the materials we allow to enter our air, soil and water. In a democracy, we have a right to raise our voices--and sometimes vote our choices--on such matters. But how do we have a reasoned opinion if so much of the scientific reasoning is not understood?
Let's assume we all agree that science and technology are the driving engines for change in our passage to the 21st Century. Our economy is dominated by technological things that emerged from the scientific knowledge acquired over the past 50 years. Without the scientific understanding of atoms and molecules, there would be no fax machines, cell phones, digital computers, Internet, medical instruments like MRI and CAT scans, genetic testing, TV, digital toothbrushes and everything that makes life worth living.
We should add that were it not for all this progress, we would also probably be free of the population crisis, global climate change, acid rain, the threat of nuclear weapons and the increasing depth of the gap that separates rich and poor, the science-rich and the science-poor.
However, the educated citizen must also be aware of the impact of science and technology on us as humans. This, in the real world, connects the sciences and the humanities in ways that are rarely taught in our schools. It behooves the lay person as well as the scientist to consider the societal implications of the advances in our knowledge and, more pointedly, in the advances of technology.
Scientific knowledge can be used for human welfare or for human peril. And science by itself is not driven by the desire to benefit humanity; it is a search for truth, wherever that leads. However, there is a moral obligation to apply science for the welfare of humanity. This was the theme in the World Conference on Science, held in Budapest last June. This obligation is shared by scientists, politicians and citizens.
The natural reaction to this, in times when the values and practices of democracy are sweeping the planet, is that citizens must be educated in the sciences and in their applications to society; educated in technology so that they can wisely exercise their rights to decide how to use or not to use these awesome powers that science makes available.
Another argument for the need for a higher level of scientific savvy by the general public has to do with providing protection against rigid belief systems, including such prominent nonsense as astrology, UFO hysteria, ghosts, fortune-tellers, magicians, clairvoyants, mystics, pyramid salesmen, medical charlatans who will sell you peach-pit cures or heal by laying on hands--a veritable jungle of what I can, with complete confidence, assemble and label as "junk science."
Also, now that we are 6 billion people going on 10 billion and now that El Nino, other predicted instabilities and much data indicate that we have very likely begun to screw up the planet's climate, we need popular consensus to address an issue such as levying a tax on carbon emissions to control global climate change. Other decisions, past and future, intrude: Should we add fluorides to our drinking water? Are genetically engineered foods safe? Should we outlaw tobacco as a killer drug? Should we stockpile more and better nuclear weapons? Can we and should we genetically design our next child? Should we build supersonic air transports (SSTs)?