Re: Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology

On 4/19/06, Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology
> National Center for Science Education ^ | 18 April 2006 | Staff
> http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040167
> Posted on 04/19/2006 6:57:51 AM EDT by PatrickHenry
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1617533/posts
>
>

I think the essay is flawed in at least two respects. First of all,
the assumption that science is only recently been politicized and
blaming the Religious Right for the decline of science education when
its decline predates the predominance of the Religious Right.

A better candidate for a societal cause here is postmodernism.
Postmodernism rightly saw modernism being used to accumulate power for
the ruling elite and science was at the point of the spear. We know
science as hypothesis and testing and peer review. Postmodernism made
science more "democratic". While the Religious Right for the most
part does not adopt postmodernism's epistemology like postmodernism it
does see modernism invading their lives and science being used as a
tool toward that end. The theonomist writer Gary North called this
"capturing the robes" where the elite capture the robes of the court,
the clergy, and scientific academia. (I am not endorsing North here
but using him as an example of getting inside the Religious Right's
head.)

Thus, it is small wonder that the Religious Right opposes science. But
it is anachronistic to blame the decline of scientific education on
them. The postmoderns was calling for the use of voting as a means of
determining scientific "truth" long before them.

Given the premises are flawed, the primary recommendation is also:
trying to get moderate Republicans elected. This is the wrong order
just like the DI did things in the wrong order. Rather, scientists
should try to be (or remain) as apolitical as possible. When
scientists explained global warming to the NAE a significant portion
saw the wisdom of the sober and moderate analysis without the
hysteria. We of all people understand that huge commonality of science
and Christianity. Religious conservatives can be persuaded of the
truth if we but take the time.

Proponents of science education should be focusing on fence mending
rather than the accumulation of political power, because the latter
only reinforces the false perceptions and will in the end cause
further erosion of scientific education in the U.S.
Received on Thu Apr 20 09:24:27 2006