Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. ... It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. . . . What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. . . .
Harry S. Truman
It happened on this date, this "greatest achievement."
New technology used to "solve" an old problem. We cannot help ourselves.
Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, suggested "we ought to stay out of the nuclei." Until we have a clue what we want, sounds like good advice.
You cannot separate tools from the critters who use them. Teaching science as some compartmentalized thought process without cultural context is a dangerous game.
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3 comments:
And perhaps teaching human constructs without mapping to our context as a species within a system is also wobbly.
Thanks for the thought provoking blog.
j
You make an important point, and one I need to remember. Ecology is vastly underrated in biology--the money is in biochemistry, and even at the high school level, the focus is on macromolecules, not life.
There is resistance in the classroom to thinking of humans as species, as opposed to humans as us vs. everything else, which is to be expected at adolescence.
A big reason I blog is to find others who help me pick up the pieces. You picked up a big one--I hope my approach becomes less wobbly now. =)
Thanks for your words.
perhaps imagining ones self as another species and writing a plan for optimum pattern might be an interesting experiment.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/michael_pollan.html
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