RATIONALE FOR RESEARCH:
This week long residential summer science camp for high school kids explores science and technology. What is the difference? Science is a human endeavor. I believe it is human nature to ask questions and attempt to understand the world around us. Science takes the form of disciplined questions that allow us to understand the world on some level. Of course, there are different kind of human questions and science is only one part of the human experience. Science cannot approach all human questions, and this is the heart of the friction between the diversity of religions, cultures, and art. However, there are often less differences than people think. Hence, I work toward learning science in two distinct modes. First, students should understand the process of science. This means recognizing the disciplines of science and the scientific method (i.e. how science is done). Once students grasp some basics of the scientific process, they should then be able to move fluently between disciplines. In other words, there are situations where compartmentalizing our thinking is hazardous. Science can be explored in the context from different cultural perspectives, artistic skills, and religous assumptions and beliefs.
Technology on the other hand are the tools we use. From attached appendages such as fingers and teeth to the use of sticks or rocks, we are not the only species to use technology, or tools. However, human technology has gone to extreem places, from the use gene splicing to interplanetary probes. I have mixed feelings about technology. I often believe it symbolizes our greatest accomplishments as well as our worst choices. Our technology has allowed us to improve health, communications, and expand our understanding of the world. At the same time, it is also used to pollute, destroy and allows us to inflate our arrogance, indifference and laziness. Just as easily as we pollute and disturb balances in nature, technology is concurrantly used to repair environmental impact and reverse damages humans have done. It is all in the choices we make. It is not enough to understand and use technology. We must learn to use new tools in the context of ethics, and healthy choices.
I believe humans often make poor choices. Our population has limited natural checks and balances and we are on an exponential growth curve. The future seems uncertain as we stretch the world's carrying capacity at the expense of other life forms. I believe we have shifted from making choices based on what it right and wrong to choices based on selfish motives for personal gains. Are we doomed? Not if we learn to make more healthy choices and begin to develop a more sincere concern with the interrelatedness of everything in this world. This leads me to my new motto...
This is a play on the cliche expresesion "waste not, want not." Apparently this expression does not work. If you preach "want not" you are trying to sell abstenance, to go without. This does not appeal to most people because most people feel it is their right to have and to choose based on individual satisfaction. Therefore, if people will not "go without" then we might at least moderate and consider the impact of our choices on others.
Science should be fun, but it should take emergency measures to educate the youth to be concerned and insightful world citizens.