Brief Introduction
Science has undoubtedly played a great part to improve our living condition and make life more convenient. But science without character has done more harm than good to human beings. A knife can be used to cut meat or kill people, and in the same token, advanced science can be applied for the general benefit of human being or for the destruction of humans and the nature as well.
Eknath Easwaran, an advocate of environmental protection, proposes in the following passage that it is high time that we took some measures to get science back on its true path so as not to “do irreparable harm to ourselves and others”.
Where are we going with our science and our business, our politics and our economic theories? What do we really want to accomplish, and why? How will our innovations affect life as a whole? These questions should be posted not only on the doors to our boardrooms and laboratories but on the doors to our minds and hearts.
Wernher von Braun said, "If you know the laws of space and obey them, space will treat you kindly." So it is with the law of the unity of life. We have invested much time and energy exploring the physical laws of nature and inventing ingenious applications of them, but we have taken little time to consider in what direction those applications will take us. This long-term perspective is the vital foundation our science and business lack today. Without an ever-alert conscience steering us toward constructive, positive research and sounding an alarm each time we waver in our respect for life as a whole, we are in grave danger of being swept off our feet[1] by forces we only dimly perceive.
The Manhattan Project is a sobering[2] example of the very best of science serving the motivations that drive men to war, with unimaginably destructive consequences. Errors like this do not occur because science is destructive or scientists are evil, but because we have limited our investigations to just half the things we need for health and peace: we study how to remake the world, but not how to remake ourselves. The result is what Gandhi calls science without humanity.
Let me make it clear that the science I am referring to is not just what is done in laboratories by people in white coats. It is the responsibility of each one of us. In the first place, it is we, with our votes and our purchases, who decide which projects are funded and which are not, which corporations are successful and which are not. If we wanted to, we could tell the Pentagon, as some young people have suggested, "We think you presently have quite enough destructive technology. If you want more, have a bake sale[3]."
But second, and even more important, we are all technicians. Technology shapes our lives in a thousand subtle ways, and we in turn affect our world with the machines technology gives us. Today the average person in the developed world owns dozens of machines that consume energy, emit gases, discharge effluents[4], and release chemical wastes the likes of which nature has never seen. You might think of the average household as a microlaboratory; together with millions of other scientists in similar micro-laboratories, we are conducting a large-scale experiment on ourselves and our world. The hypothesis? By the constant and universal application of technology, we can improve the quality of our lives; by producing and consuming more and more things, we can find inner fulfillment.
It is a tribute[5] to the energy and drive of modern society that so many people are working around the clock[6] to test this hypothesis. Unfortunately, as the data come in, there are indications that the hypothesis is faulty. We have never had more cars and machines to "save time," but we have also never had to spend two to three hours a day commuting[7] in a car filled with toxic fumes. We have never before had such excellent medical equipment, but neither have we had such pollution to endanger our health. We have never before had nuclear power. We have never before had nuclear accidents.
What do we really want to accomplish with our technology and business, and why? How will our innovations affect life as a whole? If we were careful to ask these questions every time we embarked on[8] a project, we would find that we always have a choice between two kinds of science. I read recently of a vivid example of these two sciences, personified in two scientists: each talented and capable, but each leaving us a vastly different legacy.
The first is Thomas Midgley, who in 1930 was asked by the Frigidaire division of General Motors to find something to replace the toxic ammonia being used in refrigerators. Midgley came up with one of commercial science's biggest success stories: chlorofluorocarbons[9], now commonly known as CFCs.
Midgley's chemical compound was welcomed as a miracle. Soon similar substances were being used widely in industry as aerosol propellants[10] and refrigerants[11]. I understand that today, three fourths of the food consumed in this country is cooled by chlorofluorocarbons. We depend on them for air-conditioning, as solvents[12] in the electronics industry, as an ingredient in fumigants[13] and pesticides, and in the ubiquitous[14] plastic foams[15] we use for insulation[16], cushions, egg cartons, fast food containers, and padded dashboards[17] in cars.
By 1973, in the United States alone, eight hundred and fifty million pounds of CFCs were being produced annually. That was the year when a second scientist, Sherwood Rowland, began investigating how CFCs behave in the atmosphere. Until then, little was known about the effects of CFCs. By June of 1974, Rowland, along with Mario Molina of Berkeley, had published a paper in Nature magazine. They had made a momentous discovery, but, as Rowland says, “There was no moment when I yelled ‘Eureka[18]!’” I just came home one night and told my wife, ‘The work is going very well, but it looks like the end of the world.’”
By now, what they had discovered is common knowledge. CFCs are extremely hardy[19] substances—some compounds remain in the lower atmosphere for seventy-five to one hundred and twenty years. Slowly, as more and more are released, they drift upward ten to twenty miles above the earth, where they break down under ultraviolet[20] radiation and release chlorine[21] atoms, each of which can destroy up to a hundred thousand ozone[22] molecules before it eventually falls back to earth. The most dramatic demonstration of the damage CFCs have done is the huge hole in the ozone layer—roughly the size of the continental United State—that has begun to appear each fall above the Antarctic.
This phenomenon may seem rather distant, but its effects are not. Because our ecosystem depends so much on cooperation and interdependence, a change like this, even high above the earth, has the capacity to wreak havoc[23] with all of life—to become, in Tennyson's phrase, "the little rift[24] within the lute that by and by will make the music mute, and ever widening slowly silence all."
The ozone layer, produced by the interaction of sunlight and oxygen molecules, shields us from a great deal of the sun's ultraviolet radiation—radiation that, if not blocked, can do terrible damage to life on earth. Skin cancer is the most immediate and obvious hazard to human beings, but excessive ultraviolet radiation can also lead to cataracts[25] and, as some researchers have speculated, may cause severe damage to the body's immune system.
But these are only the immediate threats, and humans are not the only living creatures to be affected. All forms of life depend on the delicate balance of light and radiation provided by the ozone layer. Over thousands of centuries, the earth's ecosystem has evolved a network of interactions and adaptive mechanisms perfectly suited to this balance. A sudden change, such as a dramatic rise in ultraviolet radiation, might endanger the entire system. If we do not act quickly to curb the use of CFCs, it is hard to predict or even imagine the effect on our agriculture, or on the marine food chain, or on the billions of acres of forest that stabilize our climate.
So we see two scientists, Midgley and Rowland, both excellent at what they do and both sincerely following their profession. I do not doubt that the late Mr. Midgley believed he was making a positive contribution to the world. Yet the success of Midgley's research has helped make the earth a much more dangerous place, while Rowland's success has alerted us to that danger and given us a chance to save the earth for our children.
Although we are rarely aware of it, we have a choice: will we invent new chemicals designed solely to produce a profit—under the pressure of competition with other countries, manufacturers, or scientists, and barely considering their possible side effects—or will we do research that respects the organic processes of nature and contributes to life as a whole? Will we apply our genius to developing X-ray laser missile "defenses" or to defending the immune systems of the world's children? Until we train our minds to be relatively free from addiction to profit, power, and individual self-gratification, we will always waver as we do today: one moment contributing things and ideas of value, the next doing irreparable harm to ourselves and others.
Let me repeat: I am not speaking only to those who pursue science as a profession. We all bear responsibility for the accomplishments of science, since we all support it—financially, with our purchases and taxes, and in our mental habits, where we depend on technology for profit, prestige, and convenience. We are the ones who are responsible for deforestation, global warming, and depletion of the ozone layer, but if we do not make the necessary changes, it will be our children and grandchildren who face the consequences.
The atmospheric scientist Michael Oppenheimer puts it with the frankness I have come to appreciate in Americans:
We're flying blind into a highly uncertain future. These changes are going to affect every human being and every ecosystem on the face of the earth, and we only have a glimmer[26] of what these changes will be. The atmosphere is supposed to do two things for us: maintain a constant chemical climate of oxygen, nitrogen and water vapor, and help maintain the radiation balance—for example, by keeping out excess ultraviolet. The unthinkable is that we're distorting this atmospheric balance. We're shifting the chemical balance so that we have more poisons in the atmosphere—ozone and acid rain on ground level[27]—while we're also changing the thermal climate of the earth through the greenhouse effect and—get this—simultaneously causing destruction of our primary filter of ultraviolet light. It’s incredible. Talk about the national-debt crisis—we're piling up debts in the atmosphere, and the piper[28] will want to be paid.
Discussion Topics
1. What does “science without humanity” imply?
2. Do we really save time with more cars and machines?
3. What kind of science do Thomas Midgley and Sherwood Rowland represent respectively?
4. What effect does ozone layer have on the sun’s ultraviolet radiation and what harms do CFCs do to the ozone layer?
5. Why do we, besides the professional scientists, bear responsibility for the accomplishments of science?
Notes
1. sweep someone off his feet: persuade someone completely and suddenly 给某人深刻印象，劝服某人
2. sobering: adj. serious
3. bake sale: （为募集基金而举行的）家制糕饼义卖
4. effluent: n. liquid waste, such as chemicals or sewage (human waste material), that flows out from a factory or similar place, usu. into a river or the sea
5. tribute: n. something done, said, or given to show respect or admiration for someone
6. around the clock: all day and all night without stopping
7. commute: v. travel regularly a long distance between one’s home and work, esp. by train
8. embark on/upon: start (esp. something new)
9. chlorofluorocarbon: n. ［化］氟氯碳化合物，含氯氟烃
10. aerosol propellant: 烟雾推进剂
11. refrigerant: n. a substance that is used to refrigerate, such as solid carbon dioxide 致冷剂
12. solvent: n. (a) liquid able to turn a solid substance into liquid 溶剂
13. fumigant: n. 熏剂
14. ubiquitous: adj. (esp. of something that is not liked or approved of) appearing, happening, or existing everywhere
15. plastic foam: 泡沫塑料，发泡塑料，多孔塑料
16. insulation: n. (esp. in relation to a house) the action of insulating or the state of being insulated 绝缘
17. dashboard: n. the instrument board in a car （汽车等上的）仪表板；
（车辆的）挡泥板；（船只的）遮水板
18. eureka: interj. used as a cry of pleasure at one’s success in finding something
19. hardy: adj. 耐受性很高的，不容易降解的
20. ultraviolet: n. & adj. 紫外线（的）
21. chlorine: n. & adj. ［化］氯（的）
22. ozone: n.［化］臭氧
23. wreak havoc: cause destruction and confusion
24. rift: n. a crack or narrow opening in a large mass 裂缝，空隙
25. cataract: n.［医］白内障
26. glimmer: n. a faint unsteady light
27. ground level:［核］基态（微观粒子系统所具有的各种状态中的能量最低的状态）；［喻］最基本的形式
28. pay the piper: 承担费用；为享乐付出代价，为行为承担后果
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