The Arts to the rescue of Science

"Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify!" -- Henry David Thoreau

It is clear that Science alone will not win the battle against the current crusaders. In a recent Science Friday interview Chris Mooney (author of "The Republican war against science" Yale Class of 1999) made it very clear that the republican fundamentalists inside the beltway have great Rove tools to oppose any result that is against their core mission of power, greed and masked virtue. Mr. Mooney is a sharp inquisitive thinker hopefully his alma mater home of -hum- Skull and Bones will give us more alumni like him and less like others, here are some highlights:

1) Ignore then label, lie and repeat. Any results that are not what you want to hear call it fuzzy math, fuzzy science, bad science, old data and incomplete. Then make sure you cover all media outlets with the same talking points, do it several times a day. Then sit back and watch your myth ascend to the heavens. It helps if you own a newspaper or a TV Channel.

2) Science in court or "the jury is still out". You can always find a good looking fellow that thinks evolution is a hoax or that global warming is a commie plot. Start an Exploratory Congressional Panel and Give this bio-stitute witness a microphone and equal time. Make sure you say "opinions are divided on this issue" even if its 99.99% in favor and one nut job against. (As a small aside this is one of the things that I hate about Public Radio, at a time where all we should be hearing when we dial in is "Stop the War" and "Bring our troops home" NPR gives us embedded repots and views from both sides, WTF? How many NPR members support the war? Who pays for membership? Then again they do take money from Wal-Mart...)

3) Paralysis through analysis. When the evidence is irrefutable say "we don't want to rush into things, let's start a committee". Again, make sure you invite all the experts, ask open ended questions and recommend another panel to start a subcommittee in the most obscure thing you can find - a scientific straw man if you want... Make sure you give money to scientists to further their studies in these remote fields and ask them to report back quarterly. If this fails, start a small grants program, make it really hard to both access the funds and choose programs that will not succeed - then say "We tried really hard". If you really have to compromise as a last resort you can use the words "Pilot Study" and "lack of replicability".

So what will stop the crusaders?(*) Who can science ally with to launch a new renaissance? I propose that the arts have a crucial role to play. Here's a small example, a few years ago the Hubble Telescope was scheduled to burn on re-entry. Ushered by an incredible photo series of distant galaxies the public reacted against the telescope's decommissioning and forced NASA to rethink its strategy and consider a manned mission to save it.

Even though Hubble's destiny is still uncertain, my point remains: pretty photos sell better that long complicated astronomical concepts. I am sure that if we were to compare the readership of Stephen Hawking's latest book "A briefer history of time" and those who have seen a Hubble photo it would be 10,000 to 1. (on a similar note I remember reading about Ansel Adams and how his photography spearheaded the protection of Yosemite.)

I recently found a great lecture entitled "The ocean, the bird and the scholar" by Helen Vendler (Harvard, Class of 1960), she suggests we should forget about philosophy and history as the focus of a classical education and instead place the arts smack in the middle:

For every person who has read a Platonic dialogue, there are probably ten who have seen a Greek marble in a museum, or if not a Greek marble, at least a Roman copy, or if not a Roman copy, at least a photograph. Around the arts there exist, in orbit, the commentaries on art produced by scholars: musicology and music criticism, art history and art criticism, literary and linguistic studies. At the periphery we might set the other humanistic disciplines--philosophy, history, the study of religion.

I have always advocated for laying out the big picture first. Science will not do this, the Arts will. No need to explain astronomy, first show me a photo of Saturn, then tell me a nice story about Saturn (more on storytelling here) then maybe share some of the highlights of your data - but mostly I want the soundbyte and I want it to be simple enough for a 5 year old to understand.

Sure the ivory tower can continue to generate - and should continue to generate - hard science in peer reviewed journals but the translation into simple, intelligent, to the point one pagers is painfully missing. The extension component of academia is critical, here is where the arts can come to the rescue, by allowing academia to synthesize its message into critical artwork for change. Simplify, simplify.

(*) In June 1098 the crusaders waged a tremendous battle at Antioch fueled in part by the "miraculous" appearance of the Holy Lance. A simple object that boosted the troops morale. Do remember that on May 1st 2003 we also saw a miraculous banner that read "mission accomplished". Propaganda is not what I am talking about, I am more interested in the development of positive icons that can inspire and educate people such as the Ark of Hope.

Eavesdropping and guessing...

Surprise surprise the administration has tapped our telephones, screened our email, recorded our conversations and eavesdropped on our meetings. President Bush has openly admitted that he authorized the NSA (the good old No Such Agency) over 30 times to spy on the American citizens. Yes the rules of the game changed after two planes brought down two towers. Gone are the days when spying on the Democratic Party was reason enough for indictment and eventual dismissal. Senator Robert Byrd valiantly stood -almost comically - up on the floor of the senate and called the pro-patriot act right wingers to their senses encouraging them to read -what a concept- read and study hisotory to see what the founding fathers wanted when they founded the republic "My, my, my, how low we have sunk." well, it isn’t over yet, we have not hit bottom. Pardon while I go shopping for the holidays.

But, spying, does it really matter? Can you blame the administration for desperately trying to cover all bases? Do they really care about information? Or have they made up their mind already? The recent words of Kurt Vonnegut lay things out plain and simple: information is not important in Washington, science (information properly used to pinpoint reality) is not important in the decision making process. Vonnegut states that Washington is all guesswork; any information that validates a myth is welcome. The whole array of DC guess-workers - from lobbyist through senators and representatives- runs fueled on guesswork. Behold the arrival of a new class of bullshit professionals (see Harry G. Frankfurt On Bullshit for academic proof of this sad fact).

I would go even further and argue that science has never played a role in the decision making process of our current leaders. Greed, money, power, myth (religion if you want) and fear have paved the way to our current reality. Add to that a nation of TV obsessed overworked and apathetic citizens and you have the perfect storm of ignorance and arrogance. Who pays the tab? Well the poor of course.

To get out of this mess will take several generations. There is no easy way out - the outer world is a crude reflection of the inner world of each and every one of us. Even though I am not a religious person I found a ray of hope on a recent lecture the Dalai Lama gave to Rutgers University students on "Peace, War and Reconciliation":

This (reconciliation) is not a religious matter, but a science of the mind. It’s important to investigate academically. We need deeper awareness about the system of our emotions. I.e. Hatred: it has a tendency to obscure seeing the reality clearly. (...) External disarmament is preceded by internal disarmament. Look at your emotion. What emotions are beneficial and what are destructive. How these emotions interlock, and relate to each other. (...) World peace through inner peace is the pathway. Further study and analyze and experiment.

So there you have it: we have to start at the core, by changing ourselves, and then pray for better times to come. It is reassuring to see the leader of one of the largest religions in the world somewhat shafting religion as an institution and stating that science should be our central axis.

Harold Pinter speaks up.

On his way to the hospital for another round of chemotherapy Harold Pinter was able to record his acceptance speech for this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. You can find the BBC story here with a link to his full speech on video. I hope they leave it there for good. Or if you rather read his remarks click here.

There is a little bit of hope in his otherwise angry -rightfully so- remarks. Mr. Pinter states that in the United States "thousands, if not millions of people were sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions" and "As things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet.". So there is a tiny ray of hope - people are angry but not "yet" willing to coalesce - we are to busy shopping and covering our asses from crumbling below -or deeper- into poverty.

Yes indeed, we are not a coherent political force. Therein lies the tragedy of our day to day lives. As we approach the holidays it appears the media is more interested in covering the tragic shootout of bipolar airline passenger againsts remarks such as Mr. Pinters. On our end we get caught up in our daily lives trapped between trips to the grocery store and Sunday episodes of desperate housewives. While the Vice-President campaigns for Tom Delay (post-indictment) and the feds put out RFPs for Strategic City Stabilization Initiative (any good idea out there? anybody?) we are knee deep into the holiday shopping season, stampeding towards the cash register like trained monkeys. God Bless America.

Mr. Pinter leaves us with homework for the holidays:

He concluded by calling for an "unflinching, unswerving and fierce intellectual determination as citizens to define the real truth of our lives and our societies. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us: the dignity of man."

Happy holidays.