Demand More Science

I've been on a bit of a mini-crusade recently.

It centers on the manufactured controversy around childhood vaccination and vaccines in general.

I say "centers on" because it encompasses a lot more: climate change, evolution, GMOs, the teaching of science in schools, fracking, mining, etc.

The crusade is for science literacy.

I'm not the poster boy for this topic. Let me tell you a true story.

When I was in 10th grade, I had a great biology teacher named Karen Emery. She was a very hands-on teacher and I had a great time. The thing was, I wasn't a "science kid." I was a "music kid," which, you know, is supposed to be the opposite. Anyway, I was dicking around in class one day and got called out to answer a question regarding eurkaryotes and prokaryotes. I hadn't really been paying attention, but instead of just admitting that, I did what any 15-year-old dickhead does to save face in class. I said, "Why do I need to learn this? I will never use this information for the rest of my life."

But I took it a step further.

That night, I found two poems — Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer" and Poe's "Ode to Science" — and typed them out. Both are Romantic reactions to reason and the Enlightenment, decrying the lack of poetry in science and the loss of wonder. Then the next morning, I placed the poems on Ms. Emery's desk. She came and found them. I watched with glee while she read them. Then I saw her eyes getting wet.

She regained her composure then and tacked the poems on her bulletin board. She carried on with class and said nothing more about them.

Yeah. I know. I was a major asshole.

Fast forward about ten years.

I'm teaching music at a middle school and this student asks me if she can go to the library. She has a report she must complete for science class. I allow her to go and am shocked when she returns in five minutes.

"You're finished?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Let me see."

I looked to see that her "report" is simply copied and pasted web pages.

"There's no way you know what any of this means! You haven't even read it! Like this word here — what does that mean?"

She read. "Eukaryotic." Then, "I dunno. What's it mean?"

Boom.

I wrote a letter of apology to Ms. Emery that night.

But I grew up thinking that science wasn't important. At least, not to me. I was artsy, you know, not concerned about all those facts and rational thinking. That stuff was for other people.

Besides, I was an evangelical Christian in an evangelical Christian community in an evangelical Christian state. We knew that scientists were liars.

I remember the "Chick tracts" we got at church. There was one about evolution that I loved. It was like a little mini-comic featuring a college student who calls out his godless college professor on evolution and convinces everyone that the Bible is right — the heavens and the earth were created in seven days.

I memorized those talking points and had them ready any time evolution was discussed.

The thing was, it wasn't really discussed all that much. I had science teachers in junior high and high school that went to my church or other churches like it, and they didn't believe in evolution either. They certainly didn't think the universe was billions of years old. Well, maybe Ms. Emery did, but she was probably bullied into going light on the topic.

The only time I ever heard these things — the age of the universe, human evolution, all of these wondrous discoveries — was from my friend Rebecca. And she was a Unitarian, so I wasn't about to trust her.

And this is the way I grew up.

As I got older, I mostly just ignored science. It wasn't my field, so I wasn't interested. And I was still an evangelical Christian, so I knew that science was wrong on many, many things. I had the Bible and the Bible was God's word — inspired, infallible, and profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.

And then I lost my faith.

That's a subject for another time, but I lost it hard. All of it. It was gone, leaving a big God-shaped hole in me.

I'm not sure when, but I decided to re-visit the whole "Science Isn't Important to Me" thing. Because, you know, I had a lot of free time on Sunday mornings.

I "discovered" Neil Degrasse Tyson. And Bill Nye. And Stephen Hawking. And Lawrence Krauss. And Brian Greene. And Richard Dawkins.

You know what else I discovered? I discovered that Whitman and Poe were wrong: science is full of wonder.

Consider this: all matter that exists in our universe was once contained within a dense ball about the size of a softball.

Or this: scientists may be on the verge of discovering why anything exists at all. It takes math. Lots of it.

Or this: all the elements in your body — the oxygen, the carbon, the nitrogen — were forged in stars. AND the elements in your right hand were probably forged in a different star than the ones in your left, perhaps separated by billions of light years. We are made of star dust.

How's that for inspiring wonder?

Beyond that though, I live in a world made possible by science.

We wouldn't have DVDs and CDs if it weren't for quantum mechanics. We would have no understanding of DNA — which has led to breakthroughs in medicine, criminal science, and history — without understanding human evolution. And my children and I enjoy a life relatively free from diseases that two generations ago crippled and killed thousands of people a year in this country.

Science matters. So does science literacy.

Here in this state and others like it, we are battling against regulation of the fossil fuel industry. This is because those interests own our state government. Luckily for them, they have a ready audience of climate-change deniers in people who are like I once was: scientifically illiterate or otherwise indifferent.

Our state and federal government actively fight against student learning standards that require critical thinking, partly, I am convinced, because students who are able to evaluate claims and evidence will begin to make better-informed decisions about global warming and other hot topics. Those decisions may result in a shift of power in this country.

The current of anti-intellectualism in this country is profound and disturbing. The chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said that global warming has to be a hoax, because the Bible promises seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, as long as the earth continues. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly has said repeatedly that no one knows what causes the tides. Georgia Republican Paul Broun, a member of the House Science Committee, said, "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell." California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher opined that dinosaur flatulence is what most likely contributed to past changes in global temperatures.

That's right: dinosaur farts.

The thing is, we need science desperately if we are to survive as a species. This world was not created for us and in fact, 99% of the species who have ever lived on this planet have gone extinct. We have an advantage, though. We have an advanced brain, one that has given us survival skills and tool-making abilities and the ability to reason. One that has given us science.

Those who have known me for a while know that my mantra for many years was "Demand More Art." I've not abandoned that cause, to be sure. I regularly advocate for the importance of the arts in the lives of people young and old, and I make my living in the arts. But we need to demand more science, too, and more scientific thinking among every day people.

If we do not, we may be beating the drum for a return to the dark forests of an age long past, back to the gloom of superstition and a time when we lived in ignorance and fear, praying and offering sacrifice to mute gods against the perils of the elements and disease. This is a future I do not wish for your children or mine.