Christopher McDonnell
cosmology, astronomy, anthropology
cosmology, astronomy, anthropology
100 years ago on this very day (and at this exact moment - 2:20am - in the dead of night) the famed RMS Titanic dipped beneath the frosty waters of the Atlantic. One and a half thousand passengers went with it.
Among those who perished was William John Rogers. The day before his fateful plunge Mr. Rogers wrote a brief letter to a Mr. James Day. The letter, recovered in the aftermath of the sinking, contained the following message:
Dear friend,
Just a line to show that I am alive & kick-
ing and going grand. It’s a treat.
Yours,
WJR
In his unknowingly fleeting moments of life Mr. Rogers was alive and well. As recounted in their final collaborative work, Billions and Billions, Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan were also going grand when an unforeseen personal tragedy struck.
The couple framed and attached this postcard to a mirror years before Sagan encountered his own rough seas. Each and every day they, when they peered into their own reflection, they were reminded of life’s ephemerality.
Dreams.
The pursuit of that which is seemingly impossible exerts pressures upon the youth of our nation. It pushes students to learn complicated scientific concepts they wouldn’t otherwise need. Through the application of this scientific knowledge we can make dreams of discovery realities.
For more on how and why we stopped dreaming, click here.
The amount of natural resources on Earth is finite.
Well, there are ways in which this isn’t true. Asteroid impacts introduce some new material here and there. Sustainable energy practices and natural processes “create” resources. But ultimately we’ve got a bunch of stuff and we’re using it up very quickly.
Space exploration is the game changer in this situation. I don’t suggest we’ll be able to import tons and tons of precious metals from our neighboring planets anytime soon, but in time there’s no reason that won’t be possible.
For now there are incredibly important resources that can be harnessed through space exploration in the immediate future. Perhaps the most valuable of these resources is solar radiation.
In increasing funding for space exploration we not only have the opportunity to harness resources less available / depleted on Earth, we have the opportunity to discover totally new resources. We humans have shown that once we get a taste for a cheap energy resource we crave more and more of it; and to satiate these desires we’ll need to search beyond our own planet.
In my personal life I’ve encountered those that oppose funding NASA. I recall speaking with a family member about this when I was a child, and at the end of the conversation I concluded: “We can’t spend money up there while there’s still problems down here on Earth!”
As a youngster it seemed so clear to me. We’re just up there for fun! But there are in fact many positive reasons for the exploration of space. Nevertheless, now in the thick of our economic recession, anti-NASA sentiments of the populace are no doubt stronger now than they were when I was a child.
If today I could speak with the 10 year-old version of myself I’d have a number of arguments in support of increased funding of NASA.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing different editions of “Why should we fund NASA?” In this edition I explore the foundation of why we should fund science of any kind. Below is an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World.
This is a very long post: I’ve included bold text summaries of each of his four points in case you’d prefer to just read the short summaries:
For me, there are four main reasons for a concerted effort to convey science - in radio, TV, movies, newspapers, books, computer programs, theme parks, and classrooms - to every citizen. In all uses of science, it is insufficient - indeed it is dangerous - to produce only a small, highly competent, well-rewarded priesthood of professionals. Instead, some fundamental understanding of the findings and methods of science must be available on the broadest scale.
Science drives economic competitiveness. Our nation puts little emphasis on science, and thus our nation’s best scientists are not Americans. If we don’t invest in science our economy will fall behind other nations.
1) Despite plentiful opportunities for misuse, science can be the golden road out of poverty and backwardness for emerging nations. It makes national economies and the global civilization run. Many nations understand this. It is why so many graduate students in science and engineering at American universities - still the best in the world - are from other countries. The corollary, one that the United States sometimes fails to grasp, is that abandoning science is the road back into poverty and backwardness.
By harnessing science we can prevent predicable catastrophes.
2) Science alerts us to the perils introduced by our world-technologies, especially to the global environment on which our lives depend. Science provides an essential early warning system.
To be scientifically literate one must have an understanding of man and man’s context.
3) Science teaches us about the deepest issues of origins, natures, and fates - of our species, of life, of our planet, of the Universe. For the first time in human history we are able to secure a real understanding of some of these matters. Every culture on Earth has addressed such issues and valued their importance. All of us feel goosebumps when we approach these grand questions. In the long run, the greatest gift of science may be in teaching us, in ways no other human endeavor has been able, something about our cosmic context, about where, when, and who we are.
By teaching our children to understand the value of science, and by showing them how to do science, we can give them the tools to critically examine all that is around them. Rather than accepting a worldview as unequivocally true, we can provide children the tools to test the world and draw informed conclusions.
4) The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it (although many have been systematically prevented from doing so). Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty. Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being. If we’re true to its values, it can tell us when we’re being lied to. It provides a mid-course correction to our mistakes. The more widespread its language, rules, and methods, the better chance we have of preserving what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had in mind. But democracy can also be subverted more thoroughly through the products of science than any pre-industrial demagogue ever dreamed.
In Carl Sagan’s final chapter - In the Valley of the Shadow - of his final publication Billions and Billions, he wrote the following regarding his disease’s prognosis:
Briefly I thought about doing nothing and waiting for the advance in medical research to find a new cure. But that was the slimmest of hopes.
Sagan understood that passive approaches to potentially dire situations need to be resolved proactively; that passive acceptance of demise, or willful ignorance of a problem is not a problem solving methodology.
The same holds true for our species’ ability to annihilate itself. We have the nuclear weapons capability to do irreversible harm to the human species and perhaps even to our planet. Though the United States does not wish to sit back in ignorance of nuclear proliferation in nations such as Iran and North Korea, the U.S. must remember that its own nuclear arsenal has a significantly more dangerous ability to cause harm.
While it is important to proactively address the rising nuclear capabilities of Iran it is more important for the United States to proactively address its own nuclear capabilities through tougher non-proliferation treaties.
The decision to end NASA’s space shuttle program was a painful moment for the current scientific community. But it was not as much a loss for the present community as much as it is a loss for the future one.
What of the aspiring Mars marchers who grew up hearing the tales of Moon walkers? In pulling the plug on the space shuttle program, was our inspiration of young Mars marches all for astro-naught?
Hello world, the intent of this blog is to write about all things cosmology, anthropology, the human species, technology, and beyond. I don’t know where the writing will take the blog, and for this reason I’ve left the blog yet unnamed. For the time being it will just be listed as my name.
I am a student of anthropology with strong interests in man’s greater context; from the most intimate level of culture, to the more distant echelon of the cosmos.
