|
EPS |
THE MALVERN SEMINAR |
Professor Roger Balian, when President of the French Physical Society, wrote saying:
"I shall be pleased to attend the Malvern seminar. At least in France, but I believe in other countries, the public understanding of science, and in particular of physics, is presently getting worse and worse, and it seems essential to react (as we try to do) against false
sciences, sects, pseudo-ecology, and a vision of science as the source of only evil applications &endash; which is developing as an anti-positivist ideology."
As a result of that letter, he was asked to write this paper for the seminar.
During recent decades we have been witnessing many signs of an increase in anti-scientific attitudes. Sects are proliferating. Fundamentalism penetrates religions and even teaching (present fights against evolutionism). Astrology, numerology and other hoaxes flourish. Nostalgia for the past and the cult of 'natural' life produce distrust towards science and its techniques. The number of students in science decreases. The benefits of science and paradoxically in medicine are hidden from view.
Apart from the real catastrophes (Bhopal, Chernobyl), irrational fears develop around events which had no victims and create a mythology (Three Mile Island, Seveso, dioxin in Belgium).
Myths of decline which contradict the facts (rise of pollution, of insecurity, of diseases) are popular. Catastrophes feed the media and inspire movies (the panic about TMI followed the success in cinemas of The Chinese Syndrome).
In many countries, ecologism has become a political force, useful when it urges industries and governments to act with greater care, dangerous when it spreads myths with the help of the media, thus paralysing action or leading to unreasonable decisions. A picturesque example: the recent ban on hunting cormorants has resulted in their rapid proliferation which now threatens fishes throughout the continent.
Radioactivity is a typical case. In the twenties and thirties it was wrongly regarded as beneficial (mineral waters, beauty creams). Until the sixties nuclear power was unanimously praised. The inverse myth which now prevails was, strangely, not created by awareness of real dangers since it spread twenty years after Hiroshima and twenty years before Chernobyl. However, both the usefulness of nuclear power and the benefits of medical applications are under-estimated, whereas the risks of nuclear energy are over-estimated.
In some national debates, many people believe that the so-called nuclear lobbies "are aware of the dangers but hide them". Accordingly, unreasonable legal norms recently enacted that the limit of activity around reactors or accelerators should be at levels comparable with the natural background. Is it ecological to oppose burning plutonium in power plants? Is it logical to refuse to weigh the long term risks of nuclear waste against the risk of emitting carbon dioxide to the environment? Students in nuclear physics have now become too scarce in view of the existing challenges.
These trends do not concern only uneducated people. Intellectuals are numerous among political ecologists. There are politicians who rely on astrology, as do some business managers when hiring employees. Negative views on science are emitted by philosophers. Those who focus on the sociology of laboratories or the behaviour of scientists ignore the universal value of scientific discoveries. They regard them as just another production of mankind (Feyerabend sees astronomy and astrology at the same level).
Epistemology has not assimilated the concepts contemporary physics: the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics or the unpredictability of chaotic dynamics are too often regarded as failures of physics. Indeed, as physicists, we trust the scientific assertions because they provide efficient means of prediction and of action, although we know they are neither absolute nor final and that they always involve uncertainties and probabilities. This does not harm their value, and progress takes place through better and better approximations. All this is not appreciated by non-scientists, especially as they tend to confuse such scientific truths with the absolute truths provided by mathematics .
People who ask only for simplistic answers, yes or no, and who seek for complete certainties, attribute the same value to statements valid within probabilities of 99.99% or of 60%. It is such people who tend to distrust science. Those who stress the various revolutions in scientific concepts also contribute to spreading doubts about science. One should realise, however, that when classical mechanics was superseded by quantum mechanics, it did not become false, but took the status of an approximation, quantitatively reliable in many cases in spite of the change of paradigm. These difficulties may explain why many intellectuals boast of their ignorance of science.
The present scepticism, lack of confidence or hostility towards science has certainly many other reasons which it is essential to uncover.
Is the barrier between the scientists and the public reinforced by the increasing abstraction of science? Or by our too specialised or mathematical vocabulary?
Are there less and less journalists and school teachers who have had some minimal scientific training?
Does the world react against positivism, which appears as a kind of religion of science?
Man needs some faith, and in spite of its expansion science cannot provide absolute truths in which to believe. Are people reacting against this inevitable expansion? Or against the constraints imposed by our technological environment?
Did the outburst of electronics games and artificial images create confusion between reality and virtuality?
Are scientists regarded as responsible for the harmful applications of science?
Do dangers look more frightful when they are invisible? Why do those successive irrational fads and panics arise?
Why do people demand zero risk for some activities while they accept the risks of car rides or of sport, and ignore those of letting things remain as they are?
The role of the media should be analysed. They care mainly for spectacular news, they stress conflicts, they treat on the same footing all opinions whether scientific or not, and favour views expressed most strongly or which look simpler. While the criteria for truth are facts for the scientist, logical consistency for the mathematicians , the journalists rely mainly on the convergence of their sources. Repetition thus transforms a false idea into an accepted myth.
Understanding this background should serve as a guide to reconcile people with science and its applications: a major challenge for the scientists and their learned societies. We should fight false ideas, popularise the important elementary achievements of past or present science, exhibit the questions to be solved, integrate science into everyone's culture. It is important to convince people that in spite of its imperfections science is the only way to grasp reality, that it is necessary as a guide for technical, energetic, ecological, economical choices and that we must rely on it to solve the major problems in the world.
Even more than transmitting scientific facts and exhibiting our passion for the beauty of science, we should convey the methods of scientific reasoning, such as the dialogue between theory and experiment or the use of probabilities, showing how scientific assertions are trustworthy within certain boundaries. In a democracy everyone ought to be familiar with the scientific mode of thinking so as to replace belief by analysis, to understand scientific arguments, to get a fair perception of risks and to balance the consequences of alternative decisions.
Our actions of popularisation may take many forms. On the one hand we should focus on teachers at all levels who are in need of assistance and on educational associations ("les Petits Débrouillards"). On the other hand we should focus on all the media, offering scientific journalists both our co-operation and a permanent source of information.
In France there are the press conferences and the electronic forum of the French Physical Society (Science Contact). Direct contact with the public is difficult but rewarding. An unexpectedly rapid success has been reached throughout France by the Bars des Sciences, created two years ago by the French Physical Society on the model of the existing Cafés de Philosophie. [Details are given in Paper A15.]