You, dear
reader, are one in a thousand.
The fact
that you're confronting this column on a web site devoted to space science and
astronomy makes you roughly as rare as technetium. Despite the fact that
astronomy is one of the two most popular science subjects in American schools
(the other is biology), it's really not that popular.
The
overwhelming majority of the citizenry has other interests, and looming large
among them are the peccadilloes and personal intrigues of the rich and famous.
Consider the contrast: in the past week the Space Telescope Science Institute
released a startlingly detailed photo of a distant cluster of galaxies, a
picture that gives even the non-expert a good idea of the structure of these,
the largest entities in the universe. The photo of cluster Abell S0740-an
image that would have bedazed every previous generation of humans-probably
didn't even make it to the front section of your local newspaper.
However,
what did garner front-page ink last week, not to mention huge dollops of
chatter on talk radio, was the unexpected death of Anna Nicole Smith, a former
Playboy Playmate and reality TV star.
Movie
director Frank Capra wasn't disclosing a staggering new truth in noting that
"what interests people is people." One dead-obvious reason is that those who
are thoroughly unresponsive to their fellow humanoids don't get a lot of representation
in the next generation. We're most interested in people, in the same way that
click beetles are most interested in click beetles. That's evolution.
But why the
seemingly preternatural fascination with famous personalities, be they powerful
figures (politicians, for example) or mere celebrities, as was Ms Smith?
That, too,
seems to have a clear evolutionary benefit. Unlike most of the beasts of the
forest, we're quite good at learning things. Stories-made possible by speech-are efficient ways of conveying life lessons to the young without the trouble
and danger of actually having to demonstrate. Hearing stories about successful
people, as well as those who have fallen, could prompt us to imitate the
behaviors of the former and avoid those of the latter. Heroes, in other words,
have survival value.
The
peculiar thing is that American heroes aren't often very good at science.
Indeed, in much popular culture, it's only the villains who're conversant with
Maxwell or Einstein. The "mad scientist" has become such a cultural icon that
the Royal Society held a special lecture on the subject. Some of the mad men
of science (and they are, overwhelmingly, men) are just evil characters intent
on destroying the world, taking over the world, or simply rearranging the world
according to their personal predilections. Dr. No and Dr. Evil come to mind,
as do Lex Luthor, Dr. Octopus, the overly Teutonic Dr. Strangelove, and the
Green Goblin.
How did
scientists become the enemy? I mean, really: who would you rather have help
you take a calculus final... or for that matter, cure the common cold or figure
out the nature of dark energy: Spiderman or Green Goblin? Science is useful.
And if the
scientists in popular media haven't slipped entirely to the dark side, they've
at least gone bonkers. They've become obsessed with some narrow field of
research, and lost sight of the big picture. When a prehistoric monster is
shambling through a major metropolis, wreaking havoc and destruction, there's
always some lab-coated PhD who's interfering with the steely-eyed military
types, screaming "we have to save it for science!" And just to make sure that
these howling academics won't become your role model, they're usually portrayed
as short, ugly bald guys with social grace and sex appeal on a par with Ben the
rodent.
This
anti-science stuff seems to have arisen in the 19th century, when the pastoral
lifestyle of the English countryside was being threatened by the steam engine.
At the same time, Victor Frankenstein was endeavoring to replace sex and
families by creating a barely functional human simulacrum in the lab (using not
much more than Tesla coils and scrounged parts), and Dr. Faustus was out
hawking his soul for some knowledge.
That's all
European. But when it comes to anti-science bias, Americans are hard to beat.
Our frontier heritage surely plays a role. When facing off against brutal
mountains, a harsh climate, aggressive animals, and an indigenous population
that might not cotton to new arrivals, are you better off wielding Newton's equations or a Bowie knife? American heroes are survivors, as television viewers
know.
In
addition, and since the Second World War, the public's perception of science
has been influenced by the destructive potential of some of its products.
These range from the evil wrought by Nazi scientists to the development of
scary atomic power. Today, the threats posed by thinking machines or genetic
engineering are the workaday staples of mad, bad science. That's just moving
with the times, but the public's reaction is the same: this stuff could be
dangerous, and besides I don't understand it. Ergo, I'll bolster my
self-esteem by putting you down because you do.
So it's no
surprise that a discipline like astronomy - as popular as it is - doesn't
really electrify most folks. The combined circulation of Astronomy and Sky
& Telescope is roughly 200,000 (with readership about twice that). The
circulation of People magazine is 3,700,000.
The
membership of the Astronomical League, a national organization of amateur
astronomers, is 16,000. The National Mah Jongg League has 275,000.
You are,
very literally, one in a thousand. But there's little reason to grouse. The
cult of personality, while mesmerizing, isn't going to guide Homo sapiens into
a better future. You're like the pioneer ants - the small percentage of ants
that dare to explore, and who are, ultimately, responsible for the colony's
long-term survival.
Anna Nicole
Smith may get the column inches now, but the future is yours.
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