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What did Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos teach us
Last edited Wed Jun 11, 2014, 02:54 PM - Edit history (2)
From AlterNet: 5 Most Important Lessons from Cosmos.
Sunday marks the finale of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.” Though the wonderful hours of being dazzled, stunned and educated by Tyson and his “Ship of the Imagination” are coming to a close, there is still plenty about our cosmos left to ponder. (Let’s face it, we’ll probably rewatch the series and learn something new with each subsequent viewing.)
Here are the lessons author Sarah Gray derived:
- 1) It’s okay not to know all of the answers.
- 2) Climate change is happening, and it’s manmade.
- 3) Evolution: How did we get here?
- 4) The danger of ignoring science, or following special-interest science.
- 5) Discovery starts with an open mind and the scientific method.
All of these are interesting; of course, 2 and 3 are the ones that have conservatives snarling like vampires biting their own veins! Number 4 is the one that I find particularly interesting and significant:
In the seventh episode, “ The Clean Room,” Tyson’s narrative does both. It follows the discoveries of California Institute of Technology researcher Clair Patterson. Patterson first set out to determine the age of the Earth, which he found to be 4.5 billion years old. In the process of making this discovery, Patterson noticed the prevalence of the toxic element, lead, in the surrounding environment. Lead had been contaminating his previous experiment, and caused him much frustration and the restarting of the process.
Patterson then set about researching the prevalence of lead in the environment, asking, “was this amount of lead natural, or introduced by man?” What he found was that harmful lead was being introduced to the environment. This finding challenged the oil industry’s current product: leaded gasoline. The true story of how Clair Patterson fought the oil industry and its hired henchman-scientist, Robert Kehoe (a long and laborious process), shows how giant corporations often try to discredit science. It also shows the importance of open-minded politicians, who are not bound by special interests.
"This was one of the first times that the authority of science was used to cloak a threat to public health and the environment,” Tyson explained.
Dr. Tyson probably will change few opinions among older conservatives; it's the younger set that is more likely to watch programs like this, learn from them, and possibly take up careers in science.
It's up to us to see that there are jobs open in science and engineering for those young people.
10 replies
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Glad you are finally catching up to what old people already knew. It is true that the series might encourage young people to take up careers in science. Those courses will be taught by older people.
