A Divided Society: the Battle over Science

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Notice of a new achievement published in the journal, Nature Ecology and Evolution that

“…has important implications in the evolutionary and molecular field, as it helps us understand the changes in the genome that accompanied the origin of vertebrates and their most unique structures, such as the complex brain, the jaw and the limbs…”

Our scientific journals are full of many such accounts of new discoveries. Some expand our understanding of establish science and others break new ground. They should encourage all of us, bring us together, as we face with new hope our journey into the future. But with substantial numbers of people denying the science behind even the truth of evolution, we face instead a widening cultural separation. 

Many of us hoped that the opposite would be true.  We banked on the hope that an advanced technological society with universal education would lead to an agreement on the basic facts of science.  We hoped that such an underlying foundation of agreement would lessen our differences in other areas, or at least clarify our choices as we wrestle with the economic and social problems that are created by wealth and intellectual progress. 

Were we wrong?

We see our society diverging, taking us on two separate paths.  Can any serious discussion of future possibilities even exist between people separated by such fundamentally different understandings of science?

One path depends upon the application of science and technology to social problems.  Those on that path balance the possibility of unintended consequences of blind acceptance of all new technologies with the seriousness of the problems that we face from poverty in both local and global communities.  Theirs is a sober appraisal of risks and gains, illumined by the light of fact, reason and judgment.  It is a path of hope.

Those on the other path, though bound with those on the first by a political system that depends upon majoritarian agreements, are swayed by false claims and fanciful remedies.  They are talking past each other, especially during elections. 

This situation may get worse before, if ever, it gets better.  Ideological divides are very hard to bridge.  The human mind, for all manner of reasons that psychologists have explained, “circles the wagons” and burns heretics.  Our past survival, citing evolution again, depended upon agreement, and agreement on false premises bound as strongly as any.  Conceivably “team false premises” survived less frequently, but that did not keep group agreement itself from being essential again and again for survival.  It may well be one expression of our genetic heritage.

Many of us believe that the education of our children is a way out of this divide. But education is an uncertain remedy.  One can “educate” children to many different beliefs.  And to impose one set of beliefs over another, and in opposition to parental choice, is seen by many “liberals” as a serious abuse of authority in a “free” society.  The irony here is obvious.  Liberals are constrained by their liberal beliefs to impose these beliefs on others. 

Still, it seems to me, we have no choice but to fight the battle and, if our only legitimate weapons must be persuasion rather than forceful imposition, then let us learn to use reason to its fullest extent and let us remember that in the absence of genuine concern and respect for another, even the best arguments are likely to be useless.