SCIENCE
AS SOLVENT OF COMMUNITY INIQUITY
By
Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Throughout
history, science has been viewed with wonder or fear. Approached with
trepidation or eagerness, and it has been treated discreetly or
rashly. Sometimes, it has simply been ignored, to the extreme
prejudice of those who ignored it.
I
submit that popular science and the spirit of scientific inquiry is
the solvent and the solver of iniquity and ignorance in America and
the world. By “solvent,” I mean its method and its results can
dissolve contemporary doubts and fears about individual and
collective capacity, as it has done throughout history. By “solver,”
I mean its disciplined pursuit can render plain the answers to knotty
equations that distort and demean human aspirations and expression.
The
example of George Washington Carver is illustrative. Born a slave in
rural, southwest Missouri, during the Civil War, whose mother was
cruelly ripped away from him during infancy, by Confederate
night-riders, he went on to become one of the greatest scientists in
American and world history. Though a sickly child, his “masters”,
the Carvers raised him as a family member, and imparted skills and
values to him he was to employ throughout his life. One of those
values was faith.
Dr.
Carver, despite his many wonderful discoveries, was a very religious
man who believed in Jesus Christ. His was not a stultifying belief,
though. On the contrary, his was a liberating belief, by means of
which he was able to appreciate the hand of God in nature and the
spirit of God in all life. His communications with God, through
science and faith, he claims, produced his myriad agricultural
discoveries and innovations. These scientific creations and
techniques not only saved southern agriculture from ruin, and with it
southern people and property, but they also produced a wholly new
science now known as “chemurgy.”
Chemurgy
is the
development of new industrial chemical products from organic raw
materials, especially from those of agricultural origin. It is the
branch of chemistry dealing with the utilization of organic products,
esp. from farms, in the manufacture of new products not classed as
food or clothing (e.g., soybeans as a base for plastics or the
production of methane from animal waste or garbage.)
The
tools of science are readily at hand: eyes to see, ears to hear, nose
to smell, fingers to touch, tongue to taste, a mind to understand, a
soul to intuit, a heart to guide, and the whole person’s faith to
believe in one’s ultimate success. Dr. Carver used these God-given
tools, his innate gifts, plus certain skills acquired in school to
prepare him for his life’s work, and to catapult him into
immortality.
These
tools are available and accessible to all. Everyone has unique,
innate gifts. Everyone has senses. Everyone has access to
education. Therefore, science is available to all, as it was to that
sickly, motherless, black boy from southwest Missouri, who was born a
slave, and who was discriminated against, but who refused to quit in
his quest to become all that he could be. Today, we all are
beneficiaries, directly or indirectly of his legacy, and others like
him, and are commensurately obligated to go and to do likewise, as he
and others have done.
This
requires application, sacrifice and refusal to say “no” when
obstacles obstruct.
Science
has the capacity to alter our lives and society for good or ill. Far
too long, the ill has held sway, leading to iniquity of all kinds.
But now, through the science festival movement (SEE LINK BELOW)
coming to the fore in America, the promise and potential of science
can trickle all the way down to elementary school children, whose
shining curiosities are primed for inquiry. They already have
science fairs in their schools, which many of their parents help them
to prepare for.
These
presentations can and should be shared with entire communities, at
community facilities, and supplemented by individual, group,
government and corporate presentations, annually, at the same place
and time. These city or region wide “science Mardi Gras” or
carnivals will not only celebrate science, itself, but they may
afford an updraft for positive community-wide improvements through
the institution and pursuit of new values, that of scientific inquiry
and creation.
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