Carl Sagan

The brilliant astrophysicist Carl Sagan once noted

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

Another time he said

“We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

I think of his words when I hear politicians press for more subsidies for corn-based ethanol, since they apparently don’t understand the studies that show that producing ethanol from corn takes more energy than it produces, and most of that energy is in the form of polluting coal and scarce petroleum.

I think of his words when I realize that perhaps only one person in 20 who drives a car, uses a computer at work, watches television to relax, takes an aspirin for their headache, sends and receives email on the internet, cooks their dinner in a microwave, and keeps in touch with a cell phone has more than the most primitive idea how any of these things work. They might as well be alien artifacts as far as most people are concerned.

I think of his words when I hear a fundamentalist preacher deriding science and technology on his weekly television show, and then soliciting donations though his internet site. Or when I hear “intelligent design” proponents misuse and misunderstand the nature of scientific reasoning.

I think of his words when I read about people who are deeply concerned about the possibility that some genetically-modified foods might appear on their grocery shelves, but are at the same time completely ignorant of all the additives already in the foods they eat.

It seems to me that one of the very top priorities for this nation, for its very long-term survival, should be to make sure that as many of its children as possible get a good, solid foundation in basic science and technology, whether or not those are fields they eventually choose to enter. It is partly a matter of keeping our nation competitive in an increasingly educated and technology-driven world. But even more important, it is a matter of equipping people with enough knowledge to understand the technology they are using, and on which their very lives depend.