MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 1 Mar 2008
In praise of
reason
Rational
thinking is not much in vogue in America.
The letters sections of most newspapers reek of emotional pleas
unsullied by reason or factual data.
Big decisions about Fayetteville's school system hinge largely on the
football team. National decisions
about gun control hinge on macho egos.
The current presidential campaign features style, emotional appeals,
catch phrases, and light-headed personal accusations, rather than a serious
discussion of such less sexy details as health care, the economy, immigration,
energy, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Darfur, Kosovo, China, globalization,
nuclear weapons, religious extremists, education, and global warming or any
other environmental issue.
Rational
thought really defines us as humans.
It brought us the scientific-technological age in which we live. It's given us modern medicine, 80-year
lifespans, a comfortable lifestyle, rapid transportation, a vast array of
communication devices, and much more.
But if we want to continue enjoying these wonderful fruits of science,
we're going to have to follow our brains more and our feelings less.
To
take an extreme example, consider road rage. Here we have the car, a sophisticated and powerful product
of scientific rationality, "controlled" by the mental equivalent of a
screaming infant. Modern times
demand that we grow up or, like Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, be destroyed
by our own inventions.
Feelings
are important and good. They
warn us of dangers, inspire affection, and give us energy. To deny our feelings would be to court
mental illness. But we'd better
not let feelings determine social or public policy decisions. The proper connection between public
policy and feelings lies in the other direction: First determine the rational policy and then put your whole
self, feelings included, behind that decision.
Fundamentalist
religion, whether of the Christian, Islamic, or Jewish variety, is the most
important example. Fundamentalist
conclusions often rest on authority figures, "literal" readings of
old books, superstition, a frank appeal to fear, and the veneration of blind
belief as a virtue rather than the deformity that it actually is. Indeed, the faithful often deem it
sinful to even think about the core religious issues. But it's thinking that makes us human. Whether it's anti-abortion
demonstrators insisting that an embryo smaller than the eye can see is a
full-fledged human being, or Islamic extremists insisting on death for critics
of Muhammad, or Israelis and Palestinians intent on full access to
"their" holy lands at the expense of those who believe otherwise,
fundamentalists drift in a dark and dangerous sea of unreasoning belief.
Creationism,
also known today as intelligent design, is a glaring American example. In the modern world of museums,
paleontology, radioactive dating, and contemporary medicine, it takes a lot of
thought control to believe that Earth is less than billions of year old, or that
humans once lived among the dinosaurs, or that evolution is not the key to the
development of life, or that humans were separately and miraculously created.
There
is plenty of irrationalism among liberals and conservatives alike. Many environmentalists have an absolute
aversion to nuclear power.
Although nuclear power obviously has some problems, especially its
connection with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it's not rational to make
safety demands on nuclear power that go far beyond the demands we make on any
other industry. It's not rational
to insist on certainty that nuclear wastes remain isolated from all
environmental interactions for a million years. One reason such demands are irrational is that global
warming makes it uncomfortably plausible that civilization might expire within
a century or two, making such long-term demands nearly irrelevant. Ironically, nuclear power can and is
helping us avoid the worst of the world's global warming threats: additional coal-fired electric generating
plants.
Global
warming has itself stimulated a certain type of irrational ideologue. "Global warming skeptics"
just can't seem to get their minds around the possibility that humans have
upset the entire climate system.
They have a gut feeling that humans are too puny to so affect our vast
planet, and that economic growth can do no ill. But today there is massive evidence that humans have caused
global deforestation, animal extinctions, declining fisheries, depletion of
atmospheric ozone, acid rain, declining resources, water shortages, and
depletion of soil nutrients, not to mention global warming. It's always possible for any particular
scientific conclusion to be wrong; otherwise, there would be no reason to check
conclusions against factual observations.
But the scientific evidence supporting human-caused global warming is
massive today, and certainly far more substantial than the nay-saying of
ideologically committed skeptics.
Such skeptics have performed a real disservice to the human race, for
instance by selling their scientific talents to the Exxon-led and
business-financed "Global Climate Coalition." This outspoken and
confrontational group, now defunct, delayed the serious consideration of global
warming within the U.S. political system for a good ten years beginning in the
mid-1990s.
If we could just escape our self-imposed ideological blinders, we could all live like kings and queens. Max Born, winner of the Nobel Prize for fundamental insights into quantum physics, once said that "The belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world." Science's most basic value is the notion that all ideas are subject to testing by experience and to challenge by critical rational thought. This code works surprisingly well for science, and might be science's most important benefit. America would profit if we'd all apply this principle to national policy issues.