The first event on the Free Radicals series 2 calendar was a talk by science critic Margaret Wertheim. Margaret delivered a presentation titled Space and Spirit: why science and religion together are driving us crazy.
This was a thoughtful and interesting look at the development of science from the middle ages. With slides of religious art to illustrate the point that as scientific understanding developed, Christianity, as seen through religious art, developed a changing perspective.
Margaret asserts;
At the birth of modern science in the seventeenth century no one imagined that science was articulating the whole of reality, but increasingly, since the enlightenment, that has been the claim.
It is this increasing claim of science to explain the human condition, our origins and the basis of ethics which Wertheim said explains the antipathy between fundamental religions and science. She went further to suggest that the antipathy goes both ways with “literalist” scientists unprepared to accept the legitimacy of any religious belief.
Wertheim is widely hailed as a rare science writer with an ability to clearly critique science for both erroneous methodology and the legitimacy of assertions on such topics as universal origins and human ethics.
Wertheim suggests that we need to find a new way of talking which allows for both scientific and religious understandings to contribute. Only in this way she asserts will we be able to progress to a world where science can contribute more than just facts to the everyday person.
Free Radicals is about sustainability and I think that the issue Margaret was talking about is relevant here. There are two common stands against acting on issues of sustainability firstly non-belief in the evidence and secondly that the solutions are economically unusable. Both are questions of belief, belief in the issue and belief in our ability to provide easy solutions.
In research carried out here at the Powerhouse in establishing the Ecologic exhibition people told us they didn’t want to come away from a visit feeling guilty, but did want to see solutions.
The solutions people are looking for are reflected in the acceptance of economics as an argument against Greenhouse solutions. I believe people want to defend themselves against science asserting that we need to change our behaviour to combat ecologic disaster.
In a street interview for our second ever Free Radicals, a debate about the NSW desalination plan, a person said they wanted a water solution found for Sydney so they could wash their car again. The public wants to be assured that problems will be solved so that they don’t have to change. The perception that real long term solutions may only be found in changed lifestyle choices is unacceptable to many people.
In the same way that religion wants to hold its ground against scientific assertions of origins and ethics, so society wants to discount science’s claims to any right to comment on our lifestyle.
