The family librarian brings me a steady stream of fiction and "good literature", for which I am grateful, but recently she brought home this book, an excellent example of non-fiction, and a genre I tend to select when left to my own devices in the Library. It made for an excellent read, even though it certainly leaves one shaking one's head at the benighted state of today's store of knowledge, whether that's knowledge of science, of geography, or whatever. And, despite the title, it's not just Americans who suffer from this.If I can paraphrase Bart Simpson, the prevailing state of mind seems to be: "Ignorant and proud of it".
I also happened to hear Richard Dawkins being interviewed on CBC Radio's The Current, back on September 29, where you can listen to the whole interview. Mr Dawkins quotes surveys that indicate 44% of Americans deny evolution and believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. In Britain, 28% believe that humans co-existed with dinosaurs and 19% believe it takes one month for the earth to orbit the sun. A short clip was played where an Arizona state legislator was recorded as saying that the earth was only 6000 years old, a statement equivalent to, according to Dawkins, believing the distance across the USA is only about 50 meters.
CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks from last January had a program segment about what the new American President should know about Science (Physics, especially), from a new book, Physics for Future Presidents. Just to remind ourselves, we're only a scant year after the 8-year term of George DubYa Bush, who rejected pretty much all scientific advice. Some of the comments made in this program segment were later attacked by some listeners; these were categorized by another listener as "What you're saying conflicts with what I believe, therefore you can't say that". There's a lot of this going around.
As Dawkins pointed out, we wouldn't want to fly in a plane where the pilot didn't know anything about flying, or go to a surgeon who didn't know anything about anatomy, but we seem to elect politicians who don't know anything about science, or geography, or world history, or economics, and who seem to be proud of it.
When you hear these stories, you need to remind yourself that we live in the 21st century and are surrounded by the results of much applied science (for better and for worse). It's almost inconceivable that so many people could be so poorly educated and in such a state of complete denial of so much of of our natural history. It's time, according to Dawkins and Jacobs, to stop accepting such ignorance as "other valid opinions" and start standing up for the knowledge we've gained in science. Evolution does happen, genetics is real, the earth is much older than 6000 years, dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years before humans appeared....
2 comments:
What would Jacoby have to say about authors like Jonathan Franzen, who turned down having one of his books on Oprah's Book Club, which would certainly have allowed it to reach a more diverse (and if I may stereotype, lower socioeducational status) group of readers. Sometimes I wonder if the "elites" really want the masses to embrace the same culture they do - otherwise how would they feel superior to the rest of us?
Whaddya mean - "the rest of us"?? ;-)
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