I have a friend who lives in fear of being asked by his preschool daughter why the sky is blue. He knows he’ll have to confess his ignorance. He’s no dummy, and he is not alone. A lot of educated people find themselves unable to say why metal boats float or what makes the seasons come and go. Ask them a scientific question and they’ll change the subject -- probably to politics or Proust.
Avoiding embarrassment is just one small reason to learn science. A more important incentive is that science and technology are all around us, as pervasive as oxygen or advertising. Science literacy is essential to navigate this world.
People without an understanding of scientific thinking have no way of knowing what to believe, what’s good information and what’s bad. They cannot sensibly judge medical advances or environmental scares. They depend on experts and are at the mercy of those who would manipulate them. Politicians or corporations sling statistics at will, knowing people cannot sort out lies from truth.
This doesn’t mean we have to be Einsteins in order to function. A lot of technology is simple to use, even for people who don’t have any engineering skills. We can operate a computer without being able to program one. And yet it is important to understand how computers work. The absence of that basic knowledge is the reason that so many governmental and business leaders ignored the Year 2000 computing problem until it was almost too late; they thought it wasn’t that big a deal, or that the experts would handle it. Now, less than a year away from “Y2K,” we can blame the same ignorance for a hysterical overreaction, as some people stockpile food and stash gold, convinced that catastrophe is imminent.
The Y2K problem is only one demonstration that managers of even nontechnological enterprises can no longer remain blissfully unaware of technical issues. In most businesses, decision makers eventually bump into a subject that requires some grasp of science basics. In technology companies, the fastest-growing segment of the economy, lack of scientific knowledge can even be a barrier to advancement.
There are still more profound benefits to be gained by understanding science. Just as history is more than dates and geography more than state capitals, science is more than the periodic table. Science is a way of looking at the world. It’s a tool to answer questions about who we are, how we came to be and what our place is in the universe. Like the humanities, science is a way to explore the great questions of life -- and, to be truly educated, one must know how to use both.
It’s also, of course, a way to handle those pressing questions our children ask. The sky has that hue, by the way, because blue light from the sun scatters off molecules in the atmosphere.
Christopher Vaughan is a Bay Area science writer who majored in biophysics.
