This term I'm teaching an English course on Science. It seems a little odd, and it appeared that way to my students at first, but I’ve found that the science world provides just as much room for discussions of ethics and subjectivity, supplies a way to talk about the individual and the writer, even the passive voice and thesis statements, as any more humanities-focused topic. An analytic approach to science invites the critical thinking I would want a student to take away from freshman composition. We tend to think about how science, which is often separated from or seen as transcendent of human affairs, functions in culture. How could we read against the grain of technological determinism and see the social implications of direct current and alternating current? What is the role of the individual in the creation of a novel versus the solution of a mathematical equation? Where do objectivity and progress separated from the human lead us?
At this last question my students thought for a moment and shyly raised their hands. “The atom bomb.” “The gas chamber.” Good.
That said, we also talk about how cool science is, all the time.
I’m also taking two courses in which the concept of “progress” and “modernity” come up frequently, and present myriad problems. One of the problems with studying the "modern" is that there is something "modern" about every time period. It's essentially a diectic. The problem with studying “Modernism” is that you have to deal as well with “modern,” “modernity,” and that evil thing, “modernization.” So many questions in seminar. Is this modern, is that modern? What do we do with societies that have not industrialized? What is an "alternative" modernism? Yikes. Because of all this intellectual labor this term, I was delighted to come upon an October 5th article by Jason Szep of Reuters about recent Nobel Prize winner Richard Schrock that nicely tied together many of the things I’ve been lately pondering.
Richard Schrock (MIT) was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry this year for the development of the “metathesis” method of organic synthesis. He shares the prize with Yves Chauvin (Institut Français du Pétrole) and Robert H. Grubbs (Caltech) for their research into the manipulation of a chemical reaction (metathesis) by the use of catalyst molecules. Their refined version of the process is used in the industry for both more efficient and more environmentally friendly fuels, synthetic fibers (including plastics and clothing), and pharmaceuticals.
Szep’s article focuses on the formative moment in Schrock’s scientific life: when his older brother Theodore gave him his first chemistry set, “whose explosive solutions and puzzling directions ignited a passion that culminated with the Nobel Prize.”
Most fascinating are the comments Szep includes from Schrock:
Beautiful. Before discovering science, Richard Schrock was decidedly primitive. Building huts in the woods "or something." After the chemistry set is introduced, he sets out on a path of development (a loaded term right now) that culminates in one of the most valued cultural achievements.
But there are stages in between:
Schrock’s recounting of his development from pre-chemistry set (which he received at age 8) to Nobel Prize replays a typical timeline of civilization driven by scientific progress. We have three moments: the pre-rational "out building huts in the woods," the fascinating and magical stage of alchemical transformation, to the hard science discovery of an ultra-efficient process that nabbed him the Nobel Prize.
Funny, also, that Schrock notices that “making things blow up” is an early, undeveloped stage of the scientific mind. I would argue, though, and my students frequently return to this idea, that science, as it serves the government, the military, etc., is still largely valued for its ability to explode things. And that’s where a lot of the money is.
You can't blame the inhumanity of science for the gas chamber or the atom bomb. The scientists who developed the atom bomb were racing to defeat the Third Reich. The guillotine, the electric chair, the gas chamber, lethal injection: all were meant to be more humane forms of execution. The lack of humanity doesn't come from science, it comes from society; it comes from humanity.
Too, too right. Some of our discussion of “humanity” and “objectivity” are in fact way too reductive. We try to see from multiple angles as much as possible, and the project of the class is certainly not to demonize or de-humanize science itself. For the most part our project is in fact to debunk the beliefs that science and humanity are separate at any moment. The moment in which we discussed scientific progress separated from the human which produced the gas chamber or the atom bomb comments from my students was, in the context of our discussion, absolutely about the social, about greenlighting scientific progress because of competition, etc. And the point of the article we were reading was that people decided to pretend science was inhuman and separate themselves from it precisely because they couldn't face the inhumanity of themselves. I suppose the main thing meant by the above was that my students are understanding the ethical problem put best in _Jurassic Park_, yes you can do it, but should you?
What I meant to say in that babble was the thing we mean to critique is not science, we love science, but the traditional understanding of “progress.”
I totally think Jurassic Park could happen.
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