The Citizen Scientist
Rated • 19 reviews • science, worldviews • sas.org
in The Citizen Scientist by Forrest M. Mims III... I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
... almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population.
URL: Science can be a dangerous ideology!
Danger zone !!
Rationality is bringing some scientists and ecologists to advocate some disastrous decisions...
In my comment on "Zooming out in time" I started to approach the problem writing about the idiocy of "terraforming" as answer to climate change.
What is advocated here by Professor Pianka is far worse.
One can understand the rationality behind "the elimination of 90 percent of the human population". Eliminating 90% of the world population will for sure eliminate the impact humans have on their environment, this is rational BUT it is not wise.
Rationality is the ideology that grew out of the application along many centuries of the logic of capital. In short capital impresses its logic of "reproduction" and "growth" with the sanction on capital holders of loss of their capital base if they don't "get" its logic. After experiencing this logic along some 5-6 centuries European merchants and early industrialists evolved a functional rationality proper to that logic and impressed it, in turn, upon the other members of the elite. Thus came about philosophic rationalism as the ultimate ideology of the logic of capital. Science finds its foundation in that ideology. It is thus not surprizing that some scientists would rationalize ultimate propositions such as "terraforming" or "The elimination of 90% of the world population". Those are very rational propositions indeed. They just fail to be wise.
Wisdom is knowledge about the whole in which we are such tiny parts and also about ourselves. It is a holistic approach of reality that sheds light on its complexity: a permanently changing whole composed of an infinity of parts and ensembles and an infinity of interconnections between those parts and ensembles.
Rationality and science want to understand the internal mechanics of parts and ensembles that they think are responsible for the causality engendering reality while wisdom wants to comprehend the whole and the interconnections between parts and ensembles in this whole without any pre-conceptions.
Confronted to danger or to necessity rationality and wisdom offer very different sets of solutions. I hope, in the end, wisdom succeeds to win over rationality to its holistic views, for I fear that, scientists and financiers let on themselves could one fast approaching day, in the name of rationality, destroy everything around us that sustains humanity's own existence.
