Three eye-opening science readings to fight irrationality At this time when even in some of the world’s supposedly advanced societies, irrational extremism is now aggressively waging war against rational thinking and science, the Forum finds it timely to recommend a retrospective reading of these three eye-opening science articles it took note of in recent years: (1) Philip Ball’s 2013 book
Curiosity that chronicles how science was able to erode deep-seated superstition or dogma from the 16th through the 18th centuries to make inquisitiveness a virtue rather than a vice; (2) Andrew Curry’s article “Archaeology: The milk revolution” in
Nature magazine about how a single genetic mutation gave ancient Europeans the ability to drink milk by breaking down its lactose that made milk toxic to adults; and (3) Steven Pinker’s article “Science Is Not Your Enemy” in the
New Republic magazine where he observes that “(t)hough everyone endorses science when it can cure disease, monitor the environment, or bash political opponents, the intrusion of science into the territories of the humanities has been deeply resented.”
(This is an update posted on October 27, 2021 to relate all of the three articles posted here in 2013 to the subject of irrational extremism that besets a growing number of advanced societies today. - Jose A. Carillo)
Philip Ball’s book Curiosity: "Science works only because it feeds on curiosity and breaks its own rules"Once upon a time curiosity was considered a dangerous and condemnable vice, with deep-seated superstition or religious dogma making people believe that there are some things they shouldn’t even attempt to know. Fortunately for humanity, the rise of science from the 16th through the 18th centuries—a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton—eroded this wrongheaded paradigm and made inquisitiveness a virtue rather than a vice.
In his new book
Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything (University Of Chicago Press, 480 pages), science writer and editor Philip Ball vividly chronicles the rise of scientific thinking and its eventual predominance in modern life. But he argues that scientific enlightenment didn’t happen as a simple, linear process; instead, he says, science emerged less through great thinkers thinking great thoughts than through the idiosyncratic experiments of thousands of independent tinkerers, inventors, collectors and flat-out oddballs.
Ball explains: “The problem is that, because science produces knowledge that is, for the most part, dependable and precise, we tend to believe there must be a dependable, precise method for obtaining it. But the truth is that science works only because it can break its own rules, make mistakes, follow blind alleys, attempt too much—and because it draws upon the resources of the human mind, with its passions and foibles as well as its reason and invention.”
Read Sam Kean’s “Science, Right and Wrong,” a review of Curiosity in the Summer 2013 issue of The American ScholarRead Timothy Ferris’s “Virtuosos and Oddballs,” a review of Philip Ball’s Curiosity, in the online Wall Street Journal now! (This article is no longer accessible unless you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal)ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Philip Ball, a science writer who lives in London, worked for over 20 years as an editor for
Nature, writes regularly in the scientific and popular media, and has authored many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and the wider culture, among them
Critical Mass,
The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature,
H2O: A Biography of Water,
Bright Earth,
Universe of Stone, and
The Music Instinct. He has a BA in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Physics from the University of Bristol.
RELATED READINGS:A highly desirable mutation. In “Archaeology: The milk revolution,” an article that came out in the July 13, 2013 issue of
Nature Magazine, Andrew Curry writes about how a single genetic mutation allowed ancient Europeans to drink milk, thus setting the stage for a continental upheaval. Until then, milk was essentially a toxin to adults because — unlike children — they couldn’t produce the lactase enzyme required to break down lactose, the main sugar in milk. But as farming started to replace hunting and gathering in the Middle East around 11,000 years ago, a genetic mutation spread through Europe that gave people the ability to produce lactase — and drink milk — throughout their lives.
Read Andrew Curry’s “Archaeology: The milk revolution” in Nature Magazine now!Why the humanities shouldn’t resent science. In “Science Is Not Your Enemy,” an article that came out in the August 6, 2013 issue of the
New Republic, Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker argues that ours is an extraordinary time for the understanding of the human condition, with intellectual problems from antiquity now being illuminated by insights from the sciences of mind, brain, genes, and evolution. “One would think that writers in the humanities would be delighted and energized by the efflorescence of new ideas from the sciences,” he says. “But one would be wrong. Though everyone endorses science when it can cure disease, monitor the environment, or bash political opponents, the intrusion of science into the territories of the humanities has been deeply resented.”
Read Steven Pinker’s “Science Is Not Your Enemy,” in the New Republic now!
