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Jun. 17th, 2006 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grinninfoole[Unknown site tag]I saw the film of Al Gore's slide show tonight with sydneycat and millari. It's an excellent presentation in itself, and the film adds a personal, reflective dimension, which at times felt odd, but which in at least two places improved Mr. Gore's message by interleaving events from his life and family history with his message about climate change. (Specifically, the scene from 1989, when he was holding Senate hearings on global warming, and his account of the death of his sister and how that led his family to stop growing tobacco.)
The earth's climate is, of course, an immensely complicated system which we'll never completely understand, but Mr. Gore does a fine job of making clear what we already know, what that clearly indicates for our future as a species, and, happily, holds out hope that we can still make a positive difference. I hope everyone in the US sees it. I hope that we are all convinced by it, and that we, and the rest of the world, act now to save ourselves.
Seeing it, I am reminded of something that struck me late in my stint in grad school. Starting in the 70s and on into the 90s, many scholars (such as Latour and Woolgar, Shapin and Shaffer, and Sandra Harding)in the history of science worked to explode the idea that science was a privileged viewpoint, that it was uniquely truthful, all-encompassing, and authoritative in its pronouncements on all things, by its very nature. It's thanks to these scholars that people like W. W. Rostow are historical artifacts and not mainstream thinkers today. However, the baby that's been lost in the bathwater, that critics like these assholes have also missed, is that scientists are, first and foremost, people who care deeply about evidence. Rhetoric matters, Experience matters. Funding sources matter. Politcal ties matter. Class, gender, nationality, theoretical commitments and all sorts of other things shape the questions asked and frame the debate over the answers given all matter, but the professional culture of science with its sedulous concern for data matters, too. And while that sub-culture is just one among a vast multitude, its practices are designed toward one goal: understanding the universe better than we do now. And that means that scientific expertise, while it can be bought, bent and broken, nevertheless has a resilience and insight into the world that we ignore at our peril.
sydneycat and millari. It's an excellent presentation in itself, and the film adds a personal, reflective dimension, which at times felt odd, but which in at least two places improved Mr. Gore's message by interleaving events from his life and family history with his message about climate change. (Specifically, the scene from 1989, when he was holding Senate hearings on global warming, and his account of the death of his sister and how that led his family to stop growing tobacco.) The earth's climate is, of course, an immensely complicated system which we'll never completely understand, but Mr. Gore does a fine job of making clear what we already know, what that clearly indicates for our future as a species, and, happily, holds out hope that we can still make a positive difference. I hope everyone in the US sees it. I hope that we are all convinced by it, and that we, and the rest of the world, act now to save ourselves.
Seeing it, I am reminded of something that struck me late in my stint in grad school. Starting in the 70s and on into the 90s, many scholars (such as Latour and Woolgar, Shapin and Shaffer, and Sandra Harding)in the history of science worked to explode the idea that science was a privileged viewpoint, that it was uniquely truthful, all-encompassing, and authoritative in its pronouncements on all things, by its very nature. It's thanks to these scholars that people like W. W. Rostow are historical artifacts and not mainstream thinkers today. However, the baby that's been lost in the bathwater, that critics like these assholes have also missed, is that scientists are, first and foremost, people who care deeply about evidence. Rhetoric matters, Experience matters. Funding sources matter. Politcal ties matter. Class, gender, nationality, theoretical commitments and all sorts of other things shape the questions asked and frame the debate over the answers given all matter, but the professional culture of science with its sedulous concern for data matters, too. And while that sub-culture is just one among a vast multitude, its practices are designed toward one goal: understanding the universe better than we do now. And that means that scientific expertise, while it can be bought, bent and broken, nevertheless has a resilience and insight into the world that we ignore at our peril.
