Tom Wakeford argues the two are linked
Fearing a US-style revival of religion as an alternative to science, the Royal Society recently decided to oppose the teaching of Creationism and intelligent design in UK schools. Some of the same celebrity scientists backing this position are also speaking out against the closure of university science departments, despite evidence that there is an ongoing decline in the number of school leavers wanting to study their courses.
I think the two issues are connected.
A few years ago, a professor in a leading UK university contacted my research team to see whether we could help reform their increasingly unpopular physical science undergraduate degrees. We suggested what we felt were some common sense reforms – making the relevance of the science to social and environmental problems explicit from the first lecture, and sacrificing some of the rote-learning of ‘basic’ facts for a more problem-based synthetic approach.
Our proposals were never acted on. We heard reports that les eminences grises had dismissed them as a step backwards. They would rather stick to the traditional approach, and hope the students eventually saw the light. This year their Vice-chancellor announced that recruitment had nose-dived further, and that their whole department was to be closed.
Moral emptiness
Though the lack of attractive and well-paying careers may be one cause, the fall in demand for science courses is also linked to a sense among young people of a moral emptiness in traditional science.
For much of the twentieth century new generations struggled, often against the odds, to have a career in science because they believed that more science would mean greater social progress. Today’s youth see a political system that seems unable to address rising poverty or runaway climate change. They rightly conclude that solving scientific puzzles or inventing new gadgets alone is unlikely to save the world. This is where religions such as Christianity and Islam, with their strong emphasis on social justice, are coming back to haunt the rationalists.
The teaching of Biblical accounts of humanity’s origins as having an equal factual basis to biological evolution is, as Britain’s teachers voted this spring, nonsensical. Yet few of the sofa scientists acknowledge the need to understand the causes of the revival of Creationism, not merely condemn its consequences.
Selfishness and solidarity
The quasi-religious belief in the selfish gene by the political class in the UK also helped lay the ground for a return to Creationism. Richard Dawkins justifies unfettered free-market capitalism as if it naturally follows from the laws of nature; and despite New Labour’s tinkering, these ultra-Darwinists have helped create a culture that values the pursuit of individual gain above all else.
So should young people believe that selfishness or solidarity is at the heart of humanity? In contrast to their prominence elsewhere, I didn’t see many selfish gene advocates taking a leading role in Make Poverty History last year. Like the then-editor of Science, Daniel Koshland, maybe they think poverty is ‘in the genes’. Most scientists who are prominent in the media make a virtue of the amoral nature of scientific inquiry. Yet most young people realise that science conducted without a valuing of the very un-selfish concept of universal human rights leads to eugenics and gas chambers.
Initiatives
Economics used to be called the ‘dismal science’. Maybe all sciences have to become less dismal, and more moral, if they are to inspire young people again.
There are some exciting new initiatives that seem to be moving in this direction – such as the University of Plymouth’s Holistic Science degree, or the University of Strathclyde’s collaboration with the Centre for Human Ecology. Even the Hippocratic Oath for scientists recently launched by the Council on Science and Technology was a small step in the right direction.
Some among a new generation of scientists give me hope about the future of our profession. They are modest about the certainty of their knowledge and open to including broader perspectives in their judgements than those that come out of the laboratory. But by living out the saying that ‘it is not new ideas that triumph, but old professors who pass away’, Britain’s celebrity spokespeople for science are holding us back. They are making the public think that nothing fundamental about the way we do science needs to change.
Tom Wakeford is Director of Co-Inquiry at the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre, University of Newcastle. His latest book, Liaisons of Life (Wiley), explores alternatives to ultra-Darwinism