By Dr. Robert Thorson
The driving force of all modern life is not politics, celebrity or God, but science.
So says David Baltimore, who assumed the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, our nation’s premier scientific organization, on Feb. 19. My purpose is not to praise Baltimore, but to dissect and share his important message.
When I say life, I do not mean personal life. Each of us is alone with our thoughts. No spouse, partner, sibling or best friend really knows what’s on our minds. At the end of each day, each individual heart — or soul, consciousness, ego, whatever you want to call it – – is a lonely hunter with little need for science.
Homo sapiens, however, is a highly evolved, highly social species. So, when I say life in the sweeping generalization above, I mean public life. There, a personal interest in power translates to politics; a personal interest in fame to celebrity; in spirit to God; and in curiosity to science.
By modern, I mean the Anthropocene Epoch, which you’ve probably never heard of. It began with the industrial revolution in late 18th- century England, when we learned how to tap the solar energy trapped in wood, coal, gas and oil and release it in the form of mechanical energy wherever and whenever we wanted.
If one had to pick an inaugural year, it would be 1780, when James Watt introduced a scientific contribution called the steam engine. Great tonnages could now be moved with steam, whether by iron horse or iron ship. Factories could be anywhere. Things could be hammered or woven into shape with a power stronger and more versatile than muscle, wind or falling water, pushing up the pace of everything: population, commerce, invention and land transformation. Next came the internal combustion engine, which made the use of liquid fossil fuels more attractive and flexible. Gasoline and diesel replaced steam. Next came atomic power, first for war, then for peace. All of this comes from science.
Not all geologists agree that we are in a new epoch separate from the Holocene (the previous part of the present interglacial) or the Pleistocene (the last glacial, ending 11,000 years ago). But from what I see of the pace of biological extinction, the transformation of the earth’s surface, global pollution and climate change, I have no doubt that humans now live in a truly new era of their own making. This is what I mean by modern.
By driving force, I mean the ideas, outcomes and inventions that make modern life go the way it does. Curiosity may have killed the cat and broken up a few religious denominations. But this is what drives scientists like David Baltimore forward. There are power- hungry, fame-seeking and spiritually motivated scientists. But the driving force for uncorrupted ones is the need to know how things work, hopefully for the public good.
David Baltimore is a case in point. His work in genetics and immunology was motivated largely by cancer and HIV-AIDS research. Were fame or achievement his motivation, he wouldn’t have authored or co-authored more than 600 papers since receiving the Nobel Prize at the tender age of 37 in 1975, nor would he keep a busy, well- funded lab at California Institute of Technology while running a national organization at the age of 69.
Allegations of scientific misconduct from two serious cases have swirled around his students, associates and co-authors since 1986. The allegations say as much about the complexity of institutional scientific research and the mentor-student relationship than anything else. Scientific misconduct is never about curiosity. It’s always about something else.
Hillary this, Obama that, Dodd in the shadow and Lieberman fade to right. This is about power. Anna Nicole this, Anna Nicole that, Brad and Angie this and Brad and Angie that. This is about celebrity. Stem cell this, evolution that, jihad here and crusade there. This is about spirit. These are manifestations of modern life, the modalities through which it is expressed.
The real public mover and shaker behind all this is science. From James Watt to David Baltimore, it’s the driving force of modern life.