The First Week

In our assignments, we were advised to read from the e-book, Cosmos You Are Here, sections of articles dealing with the dangerous of science if it is not heeded. The first article, labeled The Gift that Keeps on Giving, logically dispenses the reason as to why science should be heeded over the inane babbling that are preached without proof. It gives the example of Trofim Lysenko, a Stalinist "scientist", who persuaded the communist state to follow a direction of production that had no proof or fact other than what he himself had "thought" about. The article warns us about this in that correct science can only be discovered through an exact method.

In the second article, labeled Shattered Skies, the author similarly talks about the advance of anti-science even in the face of scientific studies that have innumerable facts. The author develops his case using the development of CFC from the early idea's of a piston. I think that he stresses the fact that science, no matter how many scientists who choose to state otherwise, is driven by the human desire of greed. This greed clouds our vision in such a way that lobbists of anti-science cannot and will not realize the fact that the science that once helped us has been proven to be harmful to us because they are entrenched in the belief that all science is good and should be used to benefit humanity.

In both articles, the authors stress, I believe, the fact that science should be believed because of the facts supporting it and not because we in our hearts want to believe a certain thing. Religion might be good and well in giving us the peace of mind that we all need but it is science that, in the end, affects us in reality and thus we need to set our goals in not what we "think" is the correct course of action but instead what we can prove to be the correct course of action.

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In response to the question proposed in web-blog, literature is what is used by scientists and those who understand science to describe the goal of a particular technology and the ideas behind them in layman's terms so that all of us may share the benefit of that particular technology. Literature, however, since it is written by the ones who have a general idea of science, drives science to new goals that science needs to accomplish in order to make these goals realistic. Literature, written by thinkers, are the creative force behind what we are aiming for when we research and study science. Da Vinci, a strong believer in science and the scientific method, wrote and drew in his books his designs for the future of science and, I think, that only through reading such books like these that are based themselves on the science of their time, can we know what goals we need to achieve in future research.