[Published in the Purdue University College of Science’s magazine “Insights,” Spring 2010.]

What the World Needs Now:  Scientific Literacy

Art Hobson

“The life-enhancing potential of science and technology cannot be realized unless the public in general comes to understand science, mathematics, and technology and to acquire scientific habits of mind; without a scientifically literate population, the outlook for a better world is not promising.”  These words appear prominently in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science for All Americans project.  However, surveys show that adults in every nation are overwhelmingly illiterate about science.

It’s ironic that the twentieth century took us to the moon but also gave us nuclear weapons, thus bringing our survival into question.  Science offers the possibility that we could all live like kings and queens, yet technology and the population explosion have made the human footprint enormous and threatening. We’ve appropriated 40% of Earth’s plant growth, degraded 45% of the land, appropriated half of the runoff water, changed planetary chemistry by doubling Earth’s “fixed” nitrogen production, raised species extinction rates to between 100 and 1000 times their previous rate, and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide to 39% above any level in the past 800,000 years.  It’s with good reason that thoughtful scientists have dubbed the present geological epoch the “Anthropocene.”  Scientists have helped create these problems, and scientists must help solve them.

Science education has a big role to play in any solution.  But science education has too often meant only the education of science and technology professionals.  What about the other 90 percent?  They vote on such issues as global warming and species preservation.  Will they “acquire scientific habits of mind,” or be scientifically illiterate?

Consider any science department within any research university.  The chances are that their top priority is faculty research and graduate students.  Undergraduate departmental majors, along with other science and technology students, get second priority.  Scientific literacy for the other 90 percent, namely the non-scientists who will be our politicians, teachers, journalists, businesspeople, and so forth, and who will determine the direction of our culture, ranks lowest if it’s taught at all.  These backward priorities are built into the hiring, promotion, salary, and tenure processes of essentially all research science departments.

It’s as though we scientists were huddled in a sinking lifeboat, discussing our own research.  We’d better help shore up the lifeboat!  We must find room in our curricula and in our lives to discuss the health of this rare jewel of a planet.

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Art Hobson is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Arkansas, winner of the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Millikan Award for teaching excellence, and author of a conceptual (non-technical) physics textbook for non-science college students, Physics: Concepts & Connections (Pearson/Addison-Wesley, 5th edition 2010).