(Science Week, day 7!)

All of human history, and the discovery of atoms, of genes, of evolution by natural selection, of the roundness of the Earth… each made once, and then humanity has them forever. (Or, even though the occasional finding is independently made by two or more people, once is all that's needed.) Scientific knowledge, offered to each new generation by the previous one, might be the most valuable thing we have.

And yet, this passage of knowledge is so regularly the target of attack by other human forces. Galileo was famously persecuted by the church for promoting heliocentrism. In America, evolution is still attacked by those whose minds idealistic creationism has dominated, and its tobacco industry is recorded as having known and suppressed the knowledge that the plant is both addictive and unsafe. Other examples come to mind easily, and though there are reasons and motivations to be found beneath, all have in common that they should call into question, like a warning sign or red flag, the sanity of the attacker. That last sentence comes from my own mind rather than from my impression of human consensus, and I think that illustrates the progress still available for humanity to make.

Today's link is from a figure who is perfectly clear on this, and the subject of his letter to the Royal Society of New Zealand is another such example.

• The full letter

It's one scientific controversy whose playing field is remote to me, so I've had to make my inferences by reading opinions – for a few years now, I've just realized – from those outside and within, but its nature is remarkably recognizable. In essence, the traditional knowledge of the land's native people, partially through a campaign of the previous government, is to be taught in public science classes. The knowledge base strikes me as debatably scientific in some portions, such as guidelines for hunting, and undebatably non-scientific in others, such as the consideration of life forces and ancient myths. It's true that the totality of this content is tradition and thus should be available to learn in school, but is not necessarily the result of finding things out, which is the only reason something should end up in a science class. And that is this author's point:

The Royal Society of New Zealand, like the Royal Society of which I have the honour to be a Fellow, is supposed to stand for science. Not “Western” science, not “European” science, not “White” science, not “Colonialist” science. Just science. Science is science is science, and it doesn’t matter who does it, or where, or what “tradition” they may have been brought up in.

That this laudable but obvious point needs making at all, let alone to a national institution meant to safeguard science, reveals this flag is especially big and especially red, and the corresponding fraying in sanity is revealed in the replies of the campaign's supporters.

I feel sorry for the adults (in this case, they are all adults) who have ended up somehow persuaded to muddle and confuse the passage of information about what we've found out to an entire country's children. Adults like this are not generally evil, but I believe they are in various combinations subtly coerced, well-meaning, afraid or themselves misguided… but my strongest feeling is simply that they, my fellow humans, are missing so much! Could they in good conscience celebrate Science Week, or continue to experience each day or starry night as they would have as children, before these pressures found them?

As humans, we all have the potential for similarly frayed sanity, and empathy should join wonder as an ingredient in attempting to face or address such problems. Reading commentary for and against any movement like this can inform us about what must be considered human nature, and about what we, having learned from past mistakes, might now look out for.

The children in this picture, by the way, while they stand to be misguided or confused by these downgraded science classes (or by any manner of presented irrationality), also have intelligence, a questioning nature, and relative freedom from the forces that worked on the adults before them, and I think those unfortunate adults are susceptible to forgetting that. If any attack on the conveying of scientific knowledge is to be countered and overturned, the victims – including, if not especially children – will likely be among the eventual counterers and overturners.

Meanwhile, while these attacks on the transfer of knowledge are regular and recognizable, the general availability of knowledge is greater than ever.

You know, having been on the Internet for a little while now, I've encountered again and again the attitude that society is declining, that humanity is doomed, or that the not-too-distant future will be harsh, dystopian or apocalyptic. And I'm baffled by it. There are billions and billions of intelligent minds on the planet now. All of them, including the slightly more frayed ones, are capable of wonder and deeply satisfiable by the knowledge of what we, through our long and recent history, really have found out so far. And the newest ones, whatever else happens among the others, will be watching.

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