Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / Sept. 15, 1979, edition 1 / Page 5
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COHCCITO^ TBCffiCXXXIYANiCHANGE "1 J **tl/ X/The force of science and technology cunnuls much? of the modern world. It holds the purse-strings of civilization, forms the basis of military might, and dominates the quality of life and the possibilities of the future for every person on earth. Why then does it seem beyond the control of the people, beyond their comprehension? Why do scientists talk learned gobbledegook and behave like an elite power group, protecting their mysteries and the basis of their power? At the same time, why does the mass of uuiiiaiiiiy seem neraea into a world ot nuclear rebel~~Triegadeaths, food additives, conspicuous tech-? nological consumption, and mindless computerization? The rapid growth of science and our increasing dependence on high technology have produced a widening gap between scientists and the general public? a gap that has been only partially bridged by education?and that only in the few most developed nations. From the beginning science and teilmulugy weic like? any other field in which some people were cleverer that * Schools have opened again, are you a plus teacher? It is far easier for a band to march to music ' and applause than it is to plod down an empty street amid dead silence. There is psychology in that thought which applies to all the relations of life. All of us respond to the music of appreciation? words which reveal to us the fact that what we are and what we are trying to do is appreciated by those with whom we come in contact. * H i. Every student in every one of your classes longs for an appreciative word from you. That word will light up the day for him and give him a new eagerness and ambition. It is quite true, we are all so constituted that we want to live up to the | expectations of someone who shows us that he | appreciates what we have done or are trying to do. Life is full of drudgery?commonplace, unexciting work that has about it a good deal of the routine. That drudgery is lightened when somebody shows us that he has a sympathetic understanding of the burdens that beset us every day. Working with students in an appreciative spirit is the sure sign of the plus teacher* On the other hand, the primary responsibility of every administrator is to provide conditions that will increase the morale of teachers, as well as to give the teachers enthusiastic and wholehearted support. A true fact is, the eve^ school * mines the quality of the Naomi C. McLean school. Why do men and women teach? Primarily because they find in teaching the opportunity to do work that brings them satisfaction. Enthusiasm on the part of the teacher creates enthusiasm on the part of the students. Genuine love for work inevitably generates that love in students. The how of teaching is more important than the what, and the most satisfying results from teaching are when the work is done in the attitude that is truly helpful to every students. It is now at the beginning of another school year that the daily fight against the deadly routinism is important. v See Page 19 r ' > \ How Terribly Te others. Right at the start of history in Mesopotamia five thousand years ago, a most sophisticated and complicated craft of arithmetic and a mathematical treatment of astronomy developed. It was incredibly successful and accurate?and as incomprehensible to the common, persons as higher mathematics has been ever since. It set a pattern that has persisted right down to modern mathematical physics and the other sciences related to it. Mathematics from the start involved not only a special talent but also a long, difficult investment in years of learning. We do not know the practical function? if any?that thesejnathematical skills had. Were the learned Mesopotamian priests and the Greeks, Arabs, and medieval and renaissance scholars that followed them deliberately hiding their skills from the common people? There was no conspiracy of an elite. Two Revolutions In the course of history two great changes in technology caused scientific knowledge to become more elite. Around 1500 AD came the Gutenberg Printing Revolution. The book very quickly changed the'entire society.'Presses were built and run by craftspeople in the cities rather than by scholars in monasteries and universities, and both the writers and the readers of the new books were a new class. , o What happened with the opening up of science to its new public? Certainly there was a general democratization hilt ' ' meant Hosieries oi nigniy technical knowledge persisted. Then in the 17th century came the Scientific Revolution. The telescope and otber instruments changed the status of our attempts to understand the universe. Before, it had depended only on-brain-power, and all philosophers worked with the same evidence. Suddenly? Ualileo saw mountains on the moon, satellites around Jupiter, thousands of stars nobody had seen before. It was a discovery of an artificial method of revelation (which the church could not then accept), and it changed the universe that was to be explained. From then till now, the effect of technology upon science has been the most powerful means of improving our understanding of both the natural universe and manmade technologies. Scientific Journals To cope with the new flood of learning, enthusiasts began to band together into societies. Making use of the presses, they began a fresh tradition of scientific journals in which they published items of new knowlT edge as they came in. At first it seemed illicit to publish atoms of knowledge in this way without maturing them into a life's? work book, but the method flourished particularly well b*^ j ^bS^VB I I First Forum Slated B / , The first of ten weekly forums on "connections; technology and Change" will be held Thursday, Sept. 20, at the Main Library on Fifth Street. The forums will be a major part of the local package of CONNECTIONS events, which aJso includes feature articles now appearing each week in The Winston-SaJem Chronicle. Speaker for the evening will be Alan Lipkin, professor of natural sciences at Winston-Salem State Unviersity. Lipkin will demonstrate "Technology Made Simple" and lead an audience discussion on whether ordinary citizens can understand science and technology and how it really affects their daily lives and their futures. Moderator for the entire Library series will be Dr. William F. Sheppard, Director of Extended I Education at WSSU. [ The program will start at 7:30 pm, with a ^ previewing showing of the first episode in the t ten-part CONNECTIONS television series to j?e broadcast nationally on PBS this fall. Entitled "The Trigger Effect," this series opener follows narrator James Burke as he pursues the first of his "detective stories" tracing the complex webs of technological development and interdependence. Burke explores the idea that throughout history, one simple change, often accidental, triggers any number of other changes until we live in a complex network where a breakdown in one part of the system inevitable causes breakdown^ even disasters, in other parts of the system, which See Page fl) & chnical by Derek de with science, and a society of writers and readers ot scientific research papefs grew with enormous rapid11\. The papers themselves became a world body ot literature incorporating the new understanding of science and technologies. N Had the technologies of communication and instruments bred a new elite? Certainly the> developed a new set of words and a special impersonal literary style appropriate for new thoughts. Some scientists were noblemen, physicians, clergymen, professors, but others were artisan instrument-makers, working surveyors and navigators, and mechanics or just enthusiasts, like modern stamp collectors or birdwatchers. What happened, however, was that the enormousls accelerated pace of new know ledge and ever-increasing sophistication of theory ccfntinuouslv removed the new scientific understanding from the majority of people simply because with each generation, despite increased education, more hao be learned,, more skills had to be Hrmiir#*H ? , ~. By the 18th century the exponential growth of new knowledge (doubling every ten years) and new technologies had reached the point where workers like the Luddites in England broke the machines that threatened their livelihood. Even the scientist* could not keep up. Encyclopaedias and summary abstracts of research papers to wrap up the learning into digestible form offered one solution. The great French Encyclopaedia was frankly political in its attitude to the technical knowledge of all skilled trades, publishing all the alleged secrets that might oppress the populace by forcing them to toil as apprentices rather than read and become masters. In the same spirit, new democratic elements in society forced disclosure of technical secrets as a pub- . Ijghrd in p^hangt' fnr ti rnrrtrrw?rri;il monopoly on the new device. < Needless to say, the encyclopaedias and patents did not solve the problems of nonscientists, but merely enabled the basic problem of availability of knowledge < to grow another stage. i ?:?BE Ava Uni> expe cons and ...n hunc Sciet % # Not having li is a luxury yoj ]? &$& . ' ;' <-'^V* &-. ^ ' jj III Bw Be 119 B Hf'W M 1 1 raUH jp r j&J H| Sm^^M yXgjg&C;'.-: yr ;^H B -S H // jfllii^^Mg^'a^B.; JB BjNK ^PB^Bj^^^s^PBI^ .. 1 ' VVM'VKT VI III kit. besides food, shelter, and ed for in life. lothing. thfre are other things It can provide hat most people need. And one of gencies. and income f > nr NORTH CARC ^V| LIFE INSURA Your family needs v tv?. Durham. North Carolina lir>(1 509 E. THIRD STRI PHONE; * ( / 9 ,< f The Chrookic, Saturday, Sept?bw 15, 1979 Page 5 Solla Price Around 1800 there was another crucial growth in science : Galvam and Volta, looking for the secrets of life, found current electricity. Within a single generation, electricity transformed chemistry into a wealth of new substances and new understandings. The 19th century saw such new technologies as fertilizers and soil chemistry, dye chemistry and explosives, steam engines and locomotives, as well as electrical energy. The steam engine had grown from a "low" (nonscientific) technology of water-pumps, but the chemical and electrical high technologies required the scientific knowledge of the day. In industrial nations education had to be expanded to produce the technical workers, and popularization prepared the public for the new age. By 1900 the wealth of the major nations and the quality of life for their people were linked more to the new technologies, low and high, ot manufacture than to the natural wealth of the land. Increased understanding brought forth more and more high technologies. By 1950 the wealth and power of nations and lives of all people began to depend ever more on the hiph - "o \ technologies and their inevitable link with sciences that were increasingly technical and learned, and beyond the understanding of the general public. In the last quarter century, new efforts to popularize science and make it understandable to the lay person have lent increased urgency to the problem of thejfclosed shop of science. But workers suffering from the impact of new technologies, appropriate and inappropriate, have broken the machines like the original Luddites. Today the popular rebellion is against nuclear reactors and genetic engineering, and in nations like Iran, everything technical. We cannot all be scientists (nor want to), and we cannot ignore the existence of the world's stock of science. But we are of necessity all consumers of more or less free choice in the technological world. The traditional answer to ignorant domination by technologies is education, but it is still only a partial solution of an irritating and desperate problem?one that we may never be able to solve completely. bout the Author REK DE SOL LA PRICE has been I Ion Professor of the History of Science at Yale ,'Prsitv cinrp 1 O^U U.> U/?N? * '1 ^.i.vv 17^7. ut iiuius uuviurdtcs in ooin rimental physics and in the history of science. A ultant on science policy to several governments international bodies, he has published some two Ired scientific papers and six books, including ice Since Babylon and Lixxte Science, Big Science. J fe insurance j can't afford. M dflj ' i3 II * M > [I ^ B < *m m? %, 1M PE ? V? II f &l|fl I j ;l III M I 11 g | ,? ^|:;^| m 4 hB e. if you should die, or money for ina Mutual, we your retirement. that protects Call as today and get started. igs you've work- It 's nice to hie able to buy a few luxuries once in a while. But cash for emer- don't overlook a necessity like c\r \r\i ir f?i?> ?i K I; ? ? ;.?. ?? ? i/i >i?ui i<i11111\ me iiiMintilet*. 3LINA MUTUAL NCECOMPANY ou. And life insurance. 1 An equal opportunity employer EET, WINSTON-SALEM n ; 724-5566 * \
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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Sept. 15, 1979, edition 1
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