Would it be better to drop ‘Science’ and use the c-word instead?

Dec 12, 2007 Alun Politics, Science 1 Comment Communication, Janet Stemwedel, Media, Society, Steve Grand

Those fol­low­ing the US Pres­id­en­tial flirt­ing may be inter­ested in Sci­ence Debate 2008 cam­paign. Janet Stem­wedel has com­ments on why it isn’t a mat­ter of know­ing facts. Sci­ence mat­ters, but why does it mat­ter? Steve Grand had the answer back in 2004.

When I become king, my first act will be to ban the word “sci­ence” from all pub­lic places. No more will advert­ise­ments be allowed to say “here comes the sci­ence bit”, as a pre­lude to 15 seconds of mean­ing­less twaddle. No longer will inno­cent nerds on nat­ural yoghurt ads find them­selves lured into sop­or­ific con­form­ity by pretty young women with a fet­ish for the word “bac­teria”. Above all, show­ing thinly dis­guised dis­aster movies under the Hori­zon ban­ner, as if they were actu­ally sci­ence broad­cast­ing, will hence­forth become a crime pun­ish­able by death. No, make that slow mutilation.

[snip]

Per­haps we should replace the word “sci­ence” with “cit­izen­ship”. Any­one who doesn’t show a proper interest in the world around them is hardly tak­ing their role as a cit­izen of the uni­verse ser­i­ously. There’s a lot of stuff out there to mar­vel at, and for an intel­li­gent human being to remain ignor­ant of it is a deep insult to our own spe­cies, let alone the rest of nature. So let’s get on and mar­vel at it for heaven’s sake: we’re not here for long.

It’s worth read­ing the whole thing.