Discussion Group Report

Dick Layton is recovering from surgery. This month's article was written by Bob Lane. Best wishes to Dick for a rapid and complete recovery!

As is always the case, the discussion group was lively and interesting. I enjoy the discussion group very much, and every chance I get I want to encourage everyone to come and check it out sometime. Like I have said before, "we won't force you to say anything."

December's discussion group readings were five essays by Isaac Asimov. Because Isaac Asimov died in 1992, some of his writings are a little dated. But his pure intellect, knowledge of science, and style of writing make most of his work a pleasure to read and a great source of information. I picked them for those very reasons and also as an effort to continually support and popularize science. The selected essays from two books, The Roving Mind and 66 Essays on the Past, Present & Future were: "The Perennial Fringe," "Popularizing Science," "For Public Understanding of Science," "Science Corps," and "Losing the Debate." All of the essays shared common threads, one by simply advocating science, and the other the importance of starting the science education of children early. Now, these threads are actually nothing new. Education in general is an ongoing concern. But how do we enhance the teaching of science in order to attract the young mind and give them a chance to find something they find irresistible?

In the essay "Popularizing Science," Asimov makes several observations and suggestions. One worthwhile quotation:

"Scientists do not form a closed caste. They do not inherit their calling. New scientists must be recruited from outside, especially since the number of scientists, from decade to decade, is increasing at a more rapid rate than the number of people generally is. How then is recruitment to take place?

"Some youngsters are drawn to science willy-nilly by an inner compulsion, and cannot be kept out of it, but surely the number of these scientist-despite-themselves simply will not be great enough. There must be those who are attracted if some stimulus is applied, but perhaps not otherwise. An effective piece of science popularization is surely one way of rousing a spark of interest in a youngster, a spark that may eventually burst into flame.

"I daresay there is not a science popularizer in the world who has not received a gratifying number of letters from young readers who explain that they are majoring in physics (chemistry, biology, mathematics, geology, astronomy) and that the original push came from a book that the popularizer had written."

We can't all be science writers, but we can find other ways to popularize science and critical thinking.

In another of the essays, "The Perennial Fringe," Asimov writes of the furious letters he gets from creationists, and goes on to say that he could send them letters back, but never does. He does, however, sum things up in the way he was so very good at:

"But then is there nothing to fight? Do we simply shrug and say that the fringers will always be with us, that we might just as well ignore them and simply go about our business?

"No, of course not. There is always the new generation coming up. Every child, every new brain, is a possible field in which rationality can be made to grow. We must therefore present the view of reason, not out of hope of reconstructing the ruined minds that have rusted shut, which is all but impossible--but to educate and train new and fertile minds.

"Furthermore, we must fight any attempt on the part of the fringers and irrationalists to call to their side the force of the state. We cannot be defeated by reason, and the fringers don't know how to use that weapon anyway, but we can be defeated (temporarily, at any rate) by the thumbscrew and the rack, or whatever the modern equivalents are.

"That we must fight to the death."