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- Hard Times for Theorists in a Post-Higgs World: The Large Hadron Collider’s big success leaves no clear avenue for new physics
- In the Eye of the Tiger: Global spread of Asian tiger mosquito could fuel outbreaks of tropical disease in temperate regions
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- Infection time: Disease is more severe when it hits in the morning, at least in mice
- Explainer: Our bodies’ internal clocks: Biological clocks determine hunger, sleepiness and other daily rhythms
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Web edition: February 27, 2009
Print edition: March 14, 2009; Vol.175 #6 (p. 31)
"Facts — Interest! — Thrill!! Newspapers using Science Service have discovered that science is not necessarily dry as dust.”
This 1926 advertisement conveys the excitement and lament of those dedicated to popularizing science. In plain prose, LaFollette provides a detailed account of the people and organizations that strove to bring science to the masses from the 1920s through the 1950s. As radio fever swept the country, and the medium’s audience expanded to millions, these individuals realized that an interest in asteroids or echinoderms did not belong solely to the educated middle class. Anyone could tune in — and people did.
LaFollette quotes extensively from archival material, conveying the pleasures and frustrations of those bridging the divide. Yet with the exception of Science Service (today Society for Science & the Public, publisher of Science News), science quickly became marginalized in most outlets, even following World War II when radio was informing atomic energy debates, LaFollette writes. “Science represented only one message among many, a statement of reason tucked amid music, laughter, sermons, sports and soap operas.”
Even today the path to a scientifically literate populace isn’t clear. LaFollette does not blame the media alone, but also the scientific community, which has had little interest in reaching larger audiences and has felt little responsibility to do so.
Univ. of Chicago, 2008, 314 p., $27.50.
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Maybe Scientists Should Propagandize As Religionists Do
A. Maybe Scientists should propagandize as religionists do
[Link was removed] #entry401928
B. For the AAAS science is a companion religion to "spiritual" personal religions
For the AAAS, the organization and Establishment Guild of our "scientists" (whatever this term means), for many many years science has been a religion, too, a "universal religion" besides and in addition to the "spiritual" personal religions.
The AAAS apparently considers that thus having two religions is in accordance with one of the Merriam-Webster (1827) definitions of rationalism, i.e.: "reliance on reason as the basis for establishment of religious truth". (wondering what was "religious truth" when this definition was drawn up, before understanding that religious truth is a virtual reality affair?)
But by adopting this meaning of rationalism AAAS disregards the other meanings of rationalim:
- "a theory that reason is in itself a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perceptions". (an 1827 unwitting reference to virtual reality...)
- "a view that reason and experience rather than the nonrational are the fundamental criteria in assessing and solution of problems"
C. So, should science be evangelized?
So why, then, should'nt the AAAS take one step further and embark on explicit evangelizing of science as "the basis for religious truth" in accordance with its hitherto implied-only tenet?
This would be an interesting field trial project in our present virtual reality 21st century technology culture concurrent with the present struggle to survive the collapsed virtual reality basis of this culture's economic tenets.
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
Life's Manifest
[Link was removed] #578
EVOLUTION Beyond Darwin 200
[Link was removed] #entry396201
[Link was removed] #1407
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