April 21st, 2017
Tomorrow, it is my intent to add my body to the crowd that will be seen for the March for Science 2017. My role is just adding to the body count, so the journalists covering the event can remark on the human turnout for this cause. This will be for the San Francisco “Satellite March for Science”, not the hopefully big March for Science to held in the Nation’s Capital. There are 609 such satellite events around the World.
The events will of course be open to all manner of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians, and also sympathizers, supporters, friends, and the merely curious. Among the STEM people, we may have “practicing” (i.e. they get paid to do research, teaching, or other support of science) and non-practicing (otherwise employed, retired). As the Marches were deliberately scheduled for the annual Earth Day, and because the motivation for the Marches is in part due to recent changes in the USA federal government, there will be a strong environmental activist component within the Marches. I expect a family family, peaceful event. There are always a few “habitual activists” who come for the glory of smashing windows and yelling tirades, but I suspect this will be literally on the margins.
So how many will be in the Marches? Worldwide, there are perhaps fifteen to twenty million acknowledged scientists (persons trained in science and possessing some credentials). UNESCO indicates that about seven million are active in research or teaching or science support. There are unacknowledged scientists as well, being persons who might be self taught or did not complete academic training, who adhere to scientific principles of understanding. In religion, one need not be a priest to be catholic, and in science one need not be hauling academic degrees and a bunch of name suffixes to be a scientist.
In my own general area of study, there are to an order of magnitude, one million physicists. This is substantially above the number back when I was in school some fifty years ago. The increase was perhaps driven by the technologies introduced in the past half century.
Still given a World population of seven billion, only 0.3% can be said to be educated as scientists, and in a random crowd of Woodstock size (“half a million strong”), you might find seventy or so physicists. The consequence is that we are pretty easy to ignore. As a voting block, despite the recent close elections, we do not rise to a level that politicians will consider significant. On Facebook, each of us is drowned out by 300 other non-scientist voices.
Furthermore, we are hampered by our tendency to avoid rhetoric in favor of logic. The general population prefers rhetoric. Historically, rhetoric has always been effective.
Aristotle taught that we have three ways to convince others of a belief: ethos, pathos, logos.
Ethos is use of your character to persuade your audience. “I am a wizard, with the high council, therefore you must take heed.”
Pathos is the appeal to emotion (you might say an appeal to your audience’s character). “You are good moral men, one and all. Surely you see the pain that the eating of ducks visits upon the duck world.”
Logos is not a construction of little plastic bricks - that would be “Lego’s(™)” - but is the use of logic. “Examining prepositions 12 through 35, combined with 78b and 94c, d, and e, the consequence is that the theorem must be accepted.” Somehow the general public just doesn’t seem to like logos.
So a march for any cause is not logos, it a combination of ethos and pathos. Our hopes are that this tiny minority called scientists will be seen, will be heard, and will be respected.
“In to the valley…”
— Robert Brown
Tomorrow, it is my intent to add my body to the crowd that will be seen for the March for Science 2017. My role is just adding to the body count, so the journalists covering the event can remark on the human turnout for this cause. This will be for the San Francisco “Satellite March for Science”, not the hopefully big March for Science to held in the Nation’s Capital. There are 609 such satellite events around the World.
The events will of course be open to all manner of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians, and also sympathizers, supporters, friends, and the merely curious. Among the STEM people, we may have “practicing” (i.e. they get paid to do research, teaching, or other support of science) and non-practicing (otherwise employed, retired). As the Marches were deliberately scheduled for the annual Earth Day, and because the motivation for the Marches is in part due to recent changes in the USA federal government, there will be a strong environmental activist component within the Marches. I expect a family family, peaceful event. There are always a few “habitual activists” who come for the glory of smashing windows and yelling tirades, but I suspect this will be literally on the margins.
So how many will be in the Marches? Worldwide, there are perhaps fifteen to twenty million acknowledged scientists (persons trained in science and possessing some credentials). UNESCO indicates that about seven million are active in research or teaching or science support. There are unacknowledged scientists as well, being persons who might be self taught or did not complete academic training, who adhere to scientific principles of understanding. In religion, one need not be a priest to be catholic, and in science one need not be hauling academic degrees and a bunch of name suffixes to be a scientist.
In my own general area of study, there are to an order of magnitude, one million physicists. This is substantially above the number back when I was in school some fifty years ago. The increase was perhaps driven by the technologies introduced in the past half century.
Still given a World population of seven billion, only 0.3% can be said to be educated as scientists, and in a random crowd of Woodstock size (“half a million strong”), you might find seventy or so physicists. The consequence is that we are pretty easy to ignore. As a voting block, despite the recent close elections, we do not rise to a level that politicians will consider significant. On Facebook, each of us is drowned out by 300 other non-scientist voices.
Furthermore, we are hampered by our tendency to avoid rhetoric in favor of logic. The general population prefers rhetoric. Historically, rhetoric has always been effective.
Aristotle taught that we have three ways to convince others of a belief: ethos, pathos, logos.
Ethos is use of your character to persuade your audience. “I am a wizard, with the high council, therefore you must take heed.”
Pathos is the appeal to emotion (you might say an appeal to your audience’s character). “You are good moral men, one and all. Surely you see the pain that the eating of ducks visits upon the duck world.”
Logos is not a construction of little plastic bricks - that would be “Lego’s(™)” - but is the use of logic. “Examining prepositions 12 through 35, combined with 78b and 94c, d, and e, the consequence is that the theorem must be accepted.” Somehow the general public just doesn’t seem to like logos.
So a march for any cause is not logos, it a combination of ethos and pathos. Our hopes are that this tiny minority called scientists will be seen, will be heard, and will be respected.
“In to the valley…”
— Robert Brown
Comments
Post a Comment