We have to touch people
I've been reading a lot about Ben Stein's film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It is, to be blunt, a deceitful sham of a "documentary". Darwin is selectively and misleadingly quoted. Noted atheistic scientists (Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers) were interviewed under the false pretenses that it was to be a balanced account rather than creationist propaganda, and then shamelessly quote-mined. Even the speech Stein makes is staged with a hand-picked crowd of extras. I would watch it, but it would probably anger me far too much. What's more, in a recent interview Stein expressed his opinion that science led to the Holocaust. If you can think of a more ridiculous and offensive attack than "science = eugenics", please don't tell me about it. I might just explode.
Still, out of such a mockery can come some good. In response to the hateful rhetoric expounded by Ben Stein and his "documentary", PZ Myers posted a powerful video clip from Jacob Bronowski's BBC documentary The Ascent of Man on the history of science.
In it Bronowski, who lost family members and friends to the concentration camps, stands at Auschwitz to discuss its very anti-scientific foundation. Here is a transcript, but watch the video. It is profoundly moving.
It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers.
Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance.
When people believe that they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known. We always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know, although we are fallible.
In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard. I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order, and the human act.
We have to touch people.
(Thanks to Aaron Brown for posting this video, and for providing a good title to steal.)