Scientific Literacy is the New...Literacy

 In my lifetime, I've been very pleased to see one trend in society taking shape, and that is the increasing popularity of science with the general public. The increasing exposure that scientific endeavors now receive in the media may not reach all audiences just yet, but is certainly reaching a broader audience than in the past. As a result, the public is becoming more aware of the good that science can do (and has done) in their lives, and this can only be for the good. It used to be that when you talked about science to anyone other than a scientist, you would either get blank stares or open hostility. When I grew up, the smart people (adults too, not just children) actually tried to hide the fact, whereas now, looking “slow on the uptake” is the ultimate deal-breaker, be it in a job interview or on a date. The schoolyard mentality that science is only for geeks is melting away, as the value of science becomes increasingly, glaringly apparently to an increasingly technological and information-driven society. Gone are the days where the majority of people could make a decent living without the benefit of a higher education, and as an increasing majority of society pursues higher education, geek is becoming the new chic. As someone who has been a geek virtually since conception, I can't quite convey how much I'm loving this development.

 The thing is, science isn't just about cool new gadgets, or advancements in health care. It is to a point, and certainly provides many of these attractive fringe benefits, but underlying it all, science is about expanding our understanding of our own reality. We all want, on some level, to understand why we're here, to place our existence in a larger context, and science does this with more eloquence than any other system we have ever come up with as a species. Carl Sagan put it best: “Science is more than just a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking, a way of rationally interrogating the world.” Although we live in a “middle world”, too large to perceive atoms and too small to perceive the structure of the galaxy, we have through the rational process of science managed to unlock many of the secrets nature has stored away at these mind-boggling scales. We have determined the most basic components of what we are made of (we believe) and now understand our place in the larger universe in much more intricate detail than would have ever been possible without looking through the illuminating lens of science. People are coming to understand this, and are increasingly being drawn into this amazing, ongoing narrative as it unfolds. Our quest to understand the universe is, when you think about it, the universe's way of knowing itself, and a life spent in the pursuit of such understanding can only be a life well spent. In the past, people often turned to religion when asking themselves the question “Why are we here?”, but recently, this thirst for understanding and the never-ending quest to expand that drives science it is providing a much more satisfactory purpose for increasing millions worldwide. I believe it no coincidence that this wave of reason and rationalism coincides with the massive decrease in worldwide violence, both at the individual and national levels, that the past few decades have seen.

 If current trends continue, science will change our lives even more dramatically in the coming decades than it has in the past. Technology and research are not just cumulative, but amplify each other, with advances in materials science, for example, spurring leaps forward in computer technology, renewables, and a number of other fields. As such, our technological progress as a species is increasing at an exponential rate, and that being said, we had better be prepared. Only by utilizing science for the unique tool that it is, and fostering a deep general understanding of it among the public, can we hope to successfully ride out this unprecedented transition. It's been said that our species faces a bottleneck very shortly, as our population reaches the limits of what the Earth can naturally provide for. If this is the case, as I believe the evidence indicates it to be, then the only way we can avoid a great deal of suffering is to find and implement innovative solutions via science. Every day, amazing new innovations and technologies are announced that can help us to make the transition into a more humane, prosperous and self-sustaining society, but only through legislation can they be widely and quickly implemented, and this is contingent on a well-educated public creating the political pressure to do so. This is the most fundamental reason for every one of us to keep informed – we need to be, in order to ensure our democracies function well, and remain in step with the times. We should not delude ourselves about the fact that societies can collapse, and in the past, it has been the ones that refused to adapt that have most often met this fate. The countries of the world, now deeply entangled by the internet, economic ties and global travel, are forming a fledgeling global civilization, but in the face of the grotesque environmental damage we are inflicting in the process, it should be obvious that we are not immune to potential catastrophe. Without wisely implementing policies to mitigate this damage, and mitigate the threat from other dangers, we are simply tempting fate.

 On a brighter note, the amount of human potential that science stands to unlock this century is incredibly inspiring. In a recent blog post, I made several predictions about how science and technology will likely enhance our lives in coming decades, and these were perhaps conservative. New and completely innovative ideas emerge all the time in science, often completely by accident, and by properly funding new research and development, we increase our odds of such happy and beneficial discoveries. In brief, this decade is likely to see the end of cancer, the dramatic expansion of the human lifespan, the eradication of extreme poverty, and the beginnings of our colonization of the solar system, all thanks to science. Such accomplishments should make us all proud of what we can accomplish as a species, and inspire us to continue pushing at the limits of our knowledge. The beginning of wisdom, it is said, is to understand that you know nothing, and I would argue that the next step to wisdom is refusing to accept this as the status quo.