Kappa

“Scientists as Citizens” by Sir John Cornforth “Kappa” cf

University of Sussex Nobel Prize for Chemistry

SCIENCE It may seem odd that a system of knowledge based on doubt could have been the driving force in constructing modern civilisation

Scientists do not believe; they check: I am not asking you to believe anything I say on a scientific matter; only that there is tested evidence for all of it, and I know the nature of that evidence and can make a judgement of its worth

A few hundred years ago - a mere breath of time - a concentrated source of energy was discovered in the fossil fuels: essentially, the energy of old sunlight trapped by life and buried by the earth. Humanity has exploited this resource with all the restraint of a fox in a chicken house.

Estimates indicate we are using about one million year’s worth of fossil fuel each year

Among all these people there seems to be a general vague expectation, if they think of the matter at all, that the scientists are sure to find some way to rescue future generations from the shit into which the present one is dropping them.

So, if you are a scientist you realize before long that if the future is in anyone’s hands it’s in yours

The perspective of the politician does not usually extend beyond the next election. The unborn have no vote, whereas the easiest way to get the votes of the majority is to promise them increases in their power to consume.

The average citizen‘s reaction is: “What did posterity ever do for me?“ The administrator seldom has a scientific background, or any remit to consider an extended future. The businessman wants to make profits—the quicker the better for himself or his shareholders.

Thomas Paine

In the preface to the remarkable book “The Age of Reason”, which he wrote in a Luxembourg prison under penalty of death during the French Revolution, Paine put in Promethian manner the argument against organized religion on the printed page for all to see.

Many philosophers at the time were agnostic or atheist but kept quiet about it. Paine was in fact a deist but thought that the supposedly “revealed” texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam were an insult to the God of Nature and he placed freethinking on a shelf within reach of the average person Christopher Hitchens THES June

“You will do me justice to remember that I have always supported the Right of Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion be from mine. He who denies to another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it”

With these words … he cut through the the traditional arguments in favour of censorship. It was not just the right of a person to speak that was at stake but the right of others to hear and have their own opinions challenged. At a stroke he rendered negligible the sinister insinuation that a little censorship can be good for you whether it comes in the guise of sensitivity or security.

The Freedom to Doubt and Question

The freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and I believe in other fields Richard Feynman in “The Meaning of it All”

It was born out of struggle It was a struggle to be permitted to doubt – to be unsure

And I do not want to forget the importance of that struggle and by default let it fall away

If you know that you are unsure you have a chance to change the situation

I want to demand this freedom for future generations

The freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and I believe in other fields Richard Feynman in “The Meaning of it All” It was born out of struggle It was a struggle to be permitted to doubt – to be unsure And I do not want to forget the importance of that struggle and by default let it fall away If you know that you are unsure you have a chance to change the situation I want to demand this freedom for future generations

Apples

© “The First American” The life and times of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN H W Brands Anchor Books

© The Indians were exceedingly gracious to strangers, setting aside a special house in each village to accommodate visitors, and were exemplars of toleration. Franklin wrote of a missionary who told Susquehannna the story of Adam’s fall, and how it had led to great travail and necessitated Jesus’s suffering and death.

© The Indians were exceedingly gracious to strangers, setting aside a special house in each village to accommodate visitors, and were exemplars of toleration. Franklin wrote of a missionary who told the Susquehannna the story of Adam’s fall, and how it had led to great travail and necessitated Jesus’s suffering and death.

Susquehanna Indian warrior from Maryland. Engraved by William Hole on John Smith's Map of Virginia of 1612.

© “When he had finished, an Indian orator stood up to thank him,” Franklin related, with a twinkle in either his own eye, or the Indian’s. “What you have told us, says he, is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider.”

© “When he had finished, an Indian orator stood up to thank him,” Franklin related, with a twinkle in either his own eye, or the Indian’s. “What you have told us, says he, is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider.”

© “When he had finished, an Indian orator stood up to thank him,” Franklin related, with a twinkle in either his own eye, or the Indian’s. “What you have told us, says he, is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider.”

© “When he had finished, an Indian orator stood up to thank him,” Franklin related, with a twinkle in either his own eye, or the Indian’s. “What you have told us, says he, is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider.”

© The missionary grew impatient, then disgusted. “What I delivered to you were sacred truths,” he said. “But what you tell me is mere fable, fiction and falsehood.”

© The Indian replied: “My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we who understand and practise those rules believed all your stories. Why do you not believe ours?”

© The Indian replied: “My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we who understand and practise those rules believed all your stories. Why do you not believe ours?”

© The Indian replied: “My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we who understand and practise those rules believed all your stories. Why do you not believe ours?”

Franklin talking to me, UPenn

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