Marching for science – and for culture – on April 22

In the last couple of months, much has been written about the upcoming March for Science to take place here in Atlanta and around the world on April 22. And a lot has been said about what makes science great. But, in my mind, not enough has yet been said about how science makes us great.

I am the executive director of the Atlanta Science Tavern, a grassroots public science forum organized on Meetup.com with over 6,200 members. We produce and promote science-related educational events and activities in the Atlanta area.

In the time that I have led the Science Tavern, the most prized compliment that I have received has been, “your group is one of the things that makes Atlanta a great place to live.” The reason that I like hearing this so much is that it implicitly recognizes that science, like art and music and theater, is an essential part of the cultural fabric of our wonderful city.

Now, I wouldn’t for a second downplay the amazing practical benefits that science has brought us.

• Vaccination, a resounding public health triumph, has saved hundreds of millions of lives and fought back the timeless scourge of commonplace childhood mortality.
• The physical sciences, with their mastery of light and matter, have given us the ability to process and communicate vast quantities of information in the blink of an eye, allowing us to form a web of human connection spanning the globe.
• Scientific investigation of the Earth and its precious atmosphere has made it possible for us to understand the role we play in altering our environment, providing us with guidance on what to do to safeguard the well-being of future generations.

But beyond these many marvelous useful things, science has also served to ennoble us. And it has done so by helping us to cultivate a sense of wonder about ourselves and the world around us.

• How did the universe grow from a microscopic knot in space-time fourteen billion years ago into the one we now observe, brimming with dark matter and dark energy?
• Did life on this planet originate, perhaps as Darwin speculated, in a warm little pond, and might we discover that it has arisen elsewhere in our solar system, perhaps beneath the surface of one of the icy moons of Jupiter or Saturn?
• How did we, around two hundred thousand years ago, come to be the clever, social primate species that we are today, one capable both of acts of heart-lifting compassion and of heart-breaking cruelty?
• Is it possible for us to explain how the workings of the tens of billions of neurons in the human brain give rise to our inner experience and even to the phenomenon of consciousness itself?

If you think that we can reap the practical benefits of science without the drive of pure, curiosity-driven research, think again; it is the timeless draw of these profound questions that sparked the scientific revolution four hundred years ago, and they are what continues to propel scientific advances of all types to this very day.

Looking at science in this way, namely as an integral part of our culture, helps make sense of much of what we see going on on the political scene. The same forces that are trying to undercut science also have the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in their crosshairs. Along the way, they intend to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Contrary to what our Philistine opponents believe, we do not live by bread alone – although some among them would deny even that to our schoolchildren. Our human spirit is nourished and elevated by painting and poetry, by music and dance, by theater and film, by philosophy and history, and, of course, by science.

This time around, though, it appears that we will not enjoy the opportunity to speak out as they come for each of us in turn; this time around, they are coming for us all in one fell swoop. So, as we march for science on Earth Day, we must also march for the arts and the humanities and for the libraries and the museums. We must march for all the strands in the glorious tapestry that we call culture. We must march for all these things that make us great.

Darwin Day thoughts on origins and the March for Science

This page from Darwin’s First Notebook on Transmutation of Species contains what I believe to be the most important scribble ever written in the history of science.

No doubt, scribbles exist elsewhere which also capture historic moments in scientific progress. I suspect they can be found in the drafts for Isaac Newton’s 1687 “Principia” announcing the the discovery of his universal law of gravitation or in the manuscript of Einstein’s 1905 "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" in which he reveals to the world his grasp of mass-energy equivalence or in Rosalind Franklin’s lab notebooks from the early 1950s and the very first realization of the helical structure of the DNA molecule.

But I dare say that none of these is both as profound and as accessible as Darwin’s 1837 sketch. In it, the great naturalist divines the origins of the biological world we see today as the vivid branching of a tree of life. Hidden in the subtext, if scribbles are allowed to have subtexts, is the answer to the question of human origins, as well.

There is some poignancy with which I recall Darwin’s scribble today, the 208th anniversary of his birth in 1809.

Having had a hand in the initial organization of the March for Science in Atlanta, a counterpart to the national march scheduled in Washington, DC for April 22, it was with some interest that I watched the national mission statement and a local variation unfold.

It was no mean feat to bring so many committed and engaged people together, along with their differing scientific and political agendas, to decide on a public statement intended to communicate what the march was about. Personally, and as the executive director of the Atlanta Science Tavern, I support the results of their effort; I learned long ago, and was painfully reminded in the course of our most recent national election, that holding out for perfection when it comes to selecting platforms or candidates is a prescription for disaster.

Nonetheless, I am saddened by the fact that the national mission statement, in the interest of maximizing buy-in from those not-yet persuaded of the importance of evidence-based policy making, has been drained of all specificity. There is no overt mention, for example, of climate change or vaccination in it. But what troubles me the most is that reference to Darwin’s great contribution has also been omitted.

It’s as though Darwin’s conception of the process of evolution through natural selection has become a theory that, at least in some quarters, dare not speak its name.

And the reason I find this so troubling is that the fight to teach evolution in public schools here, going on now for over one hundred years, is the prototypical battle pitting scientists and the best possible, indeed irrefutable, scientific evidence against elected officials whose political opposition stems from uninformed, indeed willfully ignorant, parochial opinion.

For me, to march without recognition of our very own origins in this long-standing struggle is unthinkable. My understanding is that such messages, although absent from, are consistent with the national mission statement. So, you can expect me to be marching with enthusiasm in Atlanta on Earth Day. I’ll be carrying a sign that says, “I’m with Charles Darwin.”