An Odd Post: Science Advocacy

If you play The Sims 2, I may have a treat for you in the form of a custom career, Science Advocacy. I wrote it  in part to pay homage to the important role of science popularizers like Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Phil Plait. I attempted to create a logical progression of jobs, being guided sometimes by the aforementioned gentlemen's own careers. As I haven't learned to use the necessary software yet, another user (lientebollemeis) and I collaborated to insert this track into the game. I included quotations which stress the beauty and importance of science and science education at the end of every job description; you may recognize many of them if you've listened to "The Poetry of Reality", my favorite Symphony of Science production.  If you would like to download the career, it is available at ModtheSims.com.

For those who play the game:  the skills most needed are Charisma, Creativity, Cleaning, and Logic. Chance cards are currently being added. Here are the job descriptions.


Gift Shop Employee
Motivated by both the need for money and an interest in science, you've taken a job at a science museum's gift shop. Along with the usual retail duties of working the register and stocking shelves, the gift shop provides the more interesting challenge of explaining some of the items sold (including science experiment kits for children) to the families who enter. Your enthusiasm and communicative skills could very well ignite a spark of wonder that changes a life.

"Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works." - Michael Shermer

Student Worker
Now pursuing a degree in the scientific field of your choice, you've begun working for the school's science department. Duties include assisting the departmental secretary when not aiding professors during their lab classes. Sometimes you may earn some extra cash on the side as a tutor. Keep an eye on students mishandling microscopes or 'sharing experimental data' with their classmates, and remember -- if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

"Science is a very human form of knowledge; we are always at the brink of the known." - Jacob Bronowski

Teaching Assistant
Now a graduate student beginning work on a thesis, your work keeps you in the classroom where you have taken on greater responsibilities. These include grading papers and preparing for the afternoon lab sessions. You'll be expected to take a more active role there, teaching in addition to checking student work. When class isn't in session, you can also expect to help your docent with his own research experiments.

"Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations. We remember those who prepared the way -- seeing for them, also." - Carl Sagan


Museum Guide
Though still a PhD candidate, your classroom studies are over: all that remains is thesis work. Moving away from the university requires a more steady paycheck, and so you've returned to where you began -- the science museum, where now you give guided tours, play movie presentations, and assist in the preparation of exhibits. Being able to explain concepts to a lay audience will be a boon here, so practice your communication skills.

"If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you -- and that understanding empowers you." - Neil deGrasse Tyson
Assistant Professor
Congratulations, doctor: your thesis completed and successfully defended, you are now a scientist and an educator. Chiefly you are responsible for freshman-level introductory courses in your field, so bear in mind the audience is largely disinterested in science and hostile given that they are taking your class only as per the requirements. It may be discouraging at times, but put in a few productive years and you may be hired on as a full-time instructor with license to teach your specialties.



"There's real poetry in the real world; science is the poetry of reality." - Richard Dawkins

Scientific Journalist
After a letter to a newspaper editor addressing careless scientific reporting on their part, you have been given the opportunity to write a weekly science column explaining to lay readers various new developments in science and outlining their potential. Introducing science to the public and interesting new minds in the field excites you, and so building on that you've begun to establish a web presence via a blog. Continue to work on those creative-writing skills if you really wish to shine.



"We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster." - Carl Sagan


Author
A publishing firm saw the material on your blog and offered you a book deal, one which has proven to be a surprising success. The university is beginning to realize what an asset you are; look forward to a promotion in your near future. In the meantime, the public interaction you've achieved with your blog is quite satisfying and picking up traffic. If you attain enough name recognition, more book deals may be yours for the asking.

"The quest for the truth, in and of itself, is a story that is filled with insights." - Carolyn Porco


Associate Professor
Ah, tenure. The university has officially accepted you as one of its own. While still teaching the odd freshman course, the majority of your course load now consists of classes of particular interest to yourself, and which attract only serious students. Teaching like spirits is much more fulfilling than attempting to reach annoyed freshmen, but at the same time you find contributing articles to magazines and to your own blog even more exciting.

"I think that science changes the way your mind works, to make you think a little bit more deeply about things." - PZ Myers


Professor
At last you've reached the esteemed rank of full professor, a badge of honor which indicates expertise in your field, an esteemed reputation among your colleagues, and years of experience in helping succeeding generations understand and marvel at the world. Your blog is a roaring success, and you've started a twice-monthly podcast that has caught the attention of the national media -- and two more book contracts.

"It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it." - Carl Sagan

Celebrity Scholar
Host of an award-winning educational television show, author of no less than eleven books, and the news media's go-to expert for all science-related questions: you are The Face of science in the nation. People of all ages know your voice, and you've never been more popular. Through your work, adults have discovered a newfound appreciation for the world around them, and parents love your show for its ability to stimulate their children's imagination. More than a few young people have written to tell you that you were their inspiration for going into science. You're fulfilling your greatest ambition -- isn't life marvelous?

"The story of humans is the story of ideas -- ideas which shine a light into dark corners." - Jill Tarte

Freethought Friday #28: Beauty of Understanding

View a picture of a rainbow at sunset here.

To those who value the vision of the human mind organizing observations into natural law and then using natural law to grasp the workings of what had until then been mysterious, the rainbow has gained added significance and beauty through Newton's discovery, because, to a far greater extent than before, it can be understood and truly appreciated. To those of a more limited fancy, who prefer mindless staring to understanding, and simple-minded fairy tales of gods crossing bridges to the dancing changes of light in accordance with a system that can be written as an elegant mathematical expression, I suppose it is a loss.

Isaac Asimov, "The Bridge of the Gods".

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot.

Science Saved my Soul

The Apprentice Philosopher recently sent me a video recently and after three viewings I realized I had to share it.   At the beginning of the video, its author recounts an experience he had encountering the Milky Way -- stepping out into the night,  struck by the grandeur and majesty of the Cosmos but being able to appreciate it all the more because of his understanding of modern cosmology.  He then compares this moment of soul-stirring clarity to the feelings religions attempt to reproduce and gain a monopoly on.  As he talks, beautiful imagery and subtle, but effective music plays in the background. It's in the spirit of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow.  Selected quotations are below.
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The Milky way itself contains 200 billion stars, give or take. These numbers are essential to understanding what a galaxy is, but when contemplating them some part of the human mind protests that 'it cannot be so'.  Yet an examination of the evidence brings you to the conclusion that it is, and if you take that conclusion out on a clear dark night and look up, you might see something that will change your life. This is what a galaxy looks like from the inside -- from the surburbs of our sun. Through binoculars, for every star you can see with your naked eye, you can see a hundred around it, all suspended in a grey-blue mist.  But through a modest telescope, if you wait for your eyes to adjust to the dark, and get the focus just right, you will see that mist for what it really is -- more stars,  like dust, fading into what tastes like infinity.  But you've got to have the knowledge -- seeing is only half of it. 

That night, three years ago, I knew a small part of what's out there -- the kinds of things, the scale of things, the age of things. The violence and destruction, appalling energy, hopeless gravity, and the despair of distance -- but I feel safe, because I know my world is protected by the very distance that others fear. It's like the universe screams in your face: Do you know what I am? How grand I am? How old I am? Can you even comprehend what I am? What are you, compared to me?  And when you know enough science, you can just smile up at the universe and reply, "Dude -- I am you."

When I looked at the galaxy that night, I knew the faintest twinkle of starlight was a real connection between my comprehending eye along a narrow beam of light to the surface of another sun. The photons my eyes detect, the light I see, the energy with which my nerves interact came frm that star. I thought I could never touch it, yet something from it crosses the void and touches me. I might never have known.  My eyes saw only a tiny point of light, but my mind saw so much more. 

There's no word for such experiences that come through scientific and not mystical revelation. The reason for that is that every time someone has such a mind-gasm, religion steals it -- simply by saying, "Ah, you've had a religious experience."

To even partially comprehend the scale of a single galaxy is to almost disappear -- and when you remember all the other galaxies, you shrink one hundred billion times smaller still.  But then you realize what you are -- the same facts that made you feel so insignificant also tell you how you got  here.  It's like you become more real, or maybe the universe becomes more real.  You suddenly fit. You suddenly belong.  You do not have to bow down -- you do not have to look away. In such moments, all you have to do is remember to keep breathing.

The body of a newborn baby is as old as the Cosmos. The form is new and unique, but the materials are 13.7 billion years old -- processed by nuclear fusion in stars, fashioned by electromagnetism. Cold words for amazing processes -- and that baby was you, is you. You're amazing -- not only alive, but with a mind. What fool would exchange this for every winning lottery ticket ever drawn?

When I compare what scientific knowledge has done for me, and what religion tried to do to me, I sometimes literally shiver. Religions tell children they might go to hell and they must believe -- while science tells children that they came from the stars and presents reasoning they can believe.  I've told plenty of young kids about stars, atoms, galaxies and the Big Bang, and I have never seen fear in their eyes -- only amazement and curiosity. They want more.  Why do kids swim in it, and  adults drown in it? What happens to reality  between our youngest years and adulthood? Could it be that someone promised us something so beautiful that our universe seems dull, empty, even frightening by comparison? It might still be made by a creator of some kind, but religion has made it look ugly -- religion paints everything not of itself as unholy, and sinful, while it beautifies and dignifies its errors, lies, and bigotry like a pig wearing the finest robes. In its efforts to stop us facing reality, religion has become the reality we cannot face.

Look at what religion has made us to -- to ourselves, and to each other. Religion stole our love and our loyalty and gave it to a book, to a telepathic father who tells his children that love means kneeling before him.

There might yet be a heaven -- but it isn't going to be perfect, and we're going to have to build it ourselves.