The Blindness of Science – Part 1

[Guest guest]

Healing Our World: Weekly Comment

By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

The Blindness of Science – Part 1

It was the wind that gave them life.

It is the wind that comes out of our mouths now

that gives us life.

When this cease to blow we die.

In the skin at the tips of our fingers

we see the trail of the wind,

it shows us the wind blew

when our ancestors were created.

-- Navajo Chant

There is an appointed time for everything.

And there is a time for every event under heaven -

A time to give birth, and a time to die;

A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.

-- Ecclesiastes, 3:1-2

The Space Shuttle Columbia explosion and the deaths of its astronaut crew on

February 1 have ceased to be front page news, replaced instead by the pending

war with Iraq. But a close examination of the tragedy should still be a top

priority, since the reasons behind it are tied to the path we seem to be on

towards the destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems.

The seven astronauts who died in the explosion of the space shuttle - Colonel

Rick Husband; Lt. Colonel Michael Anderson; Commander Laurel Clark; Captain

David Brown; Commander William McCool; Dr. Kalpana Chawla; and Ilan Ramon, a

colonel in the Israeli Air Force. (Photo courtesy NASA)As I heard the press

briefings by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) in the days

following the horrific destruction of the Columbia and the loss of all seven

astronauts, I got angrier and angrier.

I spent nearly 20 years working in the U.S. space program, mostly on robotic

space explorers and I left that field to devote my life to the Earth primarily

because the practice of science and engineering had become so separated from

human experience that it was wasting money, risking lives, and threatening the

other worlds in our Solar System as well as our own planet.

The shuttle broke up 39 miles over Texas on February 1 and fell to Earth just as

it was experiencing maximum re-entry heat of 3,000 degrees and speeds of 12,500

miles per hour, or 18 times the speed of sound. All seven astronauts aboard

perished.

Hearing the NASA managers talk about how they assembled a team of experts to

determine if the impact on the left wing of the shuttle by a piece of insulation

that came off of the external fuel tank at lift-off was a risk brings back the

traumatic emotions I felt after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.

I remember seeing photos of the gantry below the Challenger on that frigid cold

day in January. It was so cold that foot long, two inch thick icicles hung from

equipment and pools of antifreeze were frozen solid. Yet the OK to launch was

given, in spite of concerns raised by the rank and file engineers.

Then, many months later, physicist Richard Feynman, a member of the Presidential

Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, reminded the world that we

are often blinded by our fabulous technology and our love affair with

objectivity. He took a simple rubber washer, meant to simulate the O-ring

separators in the space shuttle solid rocket boosters, and dropped it into a

glass of ice water. Then he took it out and snapped it in two, demonstrating

with a ridiculously simple experiment that sometimes using your senses and

intuition beats out all scientific measurement and analysis.

Ice on the gantry below the Challenger (Photo courtesy NASA)The Commission

found that the cold had caused the O-ring seals to become brittle and rocket

fuel ignited, creating a blow torch that exploded the main fuel tank.

Upon liftoff on January 16, 2003, the Columbia’s heat shielding tiles on the

underside of the left wing were struck by a significant piece of debris. The

space agency keeps calling it “foam,” but this is very misleading to the public.

The insulating material sprays on as foam, but hardens to cement like

consistency. It may have been as large as seven inches by 32 inches.

Columbia broke up just 16 minutes before its scheduled landing in Cape

Canaveral, Florida. NASA said temperature data showed that the left side - the

same side hit by the debris - heated up considerably before the shuttle

disintegrated.

So here’s the problem: whether or not the impact of this cement like debris on

the thin layer of critical tiles turns out to be the cause of the disaster or

not doesn’t really matter. The issue is that the flight controllers should have

aborted the mission immediately after the impact and implemented one of a number

of scenarios that would have had the shuttle return to Cape Canaveral or land at

a prearranged spot in some other part of the world.

Shuttle astronauts and controllers prepare for this contingency and have even

made arrangements with the governments of other countries to land if necessary.

Instead, they assembled a team of analysts who, in a half page memo, reported

that the risk was acceptable. These analysts had never done such a task before.

The engineers with 25 years experience with shuttle missions weren’t asked to

help, since the bulk of shuttle operations had been transferred to a private

contractor.

As a result of that analysis, and since the space agency concluded that they

couldn’t do anything about it anyway, the decision was made not to use ground

based telescopes or cameras from the space station to view the underside of the

wing.

And now seven people are dead.

We are constantly told that such cutting edge endeavors involve considerable

risk. I have no problem with legitimate risks, but when the risk is generated by

political schemes, poorly funded programs, managers who have been promoted in

spite of mediocre performance in their careers, and scientists who are trained

to remove human experience from the analysis, then accepting that kind of risk

is far from heroic.

NASA engineers seem incredulous that their analysis could have been in error.

And that is the problem. Believing that a scientific analysis can take the place

of direct human experience, intuition, and reason is a deep and pervasive

problem that may be at the heart of all our environmental and social problems as

well. The importance of this event is that it serves to illustrate the extreme

disconnect that has developed between science and the human experience.

There has been considerable criticism among some environmental, humane, and

peace advocates about all the attention that was paid to the loss of only seven

individuals. While the media was consumed with details of the Columbia disaster,

the slaughter of 350,000 harp seals began with babies being brutally beaten and

skinned alive on the ice flows of Canada. This is from the 275,000 quota allowed

last year. Each year, 220,000 people die from the effects of pesticide

poisoning. And the Bush administration is putting the finishing touches on their

“Shock and Awe” plan to devastate Baghdad with an unprecedented bombing with

3,000 bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours that could kill a half million

innocent people.

Future space shuttle concepts from left to right: X-33, VentureStar, current

space shuttle (Photo courtesy NASA)But it is vitally important to focus on the

Columbia because it illustrates dramatically and graphically what may be the

prime reason for all the terrifying issues described above. Politicians,

scientists, economists, industry leaders and business owners operate in a system

that has devalued the importance of the human experience, emotions, and senses.

As I said a few weeks ago when discussing the historical basis for the United

States’ extreme focus on the rights of the individual, Fritjof Capra speculated

in his book “The Turning Point,” that between the years 1500 and 1700, there was

a dramatic shift in the way people perceived their place in the world. Prior to

that time, the purpose and nature of science was very different. There was very

little desire to predict and control, the hallmark motivations of modern science

today.

Prior to that time, medieval science was based on both reason and faith and

scientists were looking more for the purpose underlying the phenomena they

observed. They were focused on questions of God, the soul, and ethics. There was

value placed in direct personal experience. There was a more holistic view of

the universe and our participation in it.

The view of the world as a machine replaced the more organic worldview and the

era of the Scientific Revolution began. The shift that took place was dramatic.

The human senses that had been the prime investigative tools of the scientist

were replaced with objective observation, data collecting, and endless analyses.

Scientists began believing that they should restrict themselves to studying the

shapes, numbers, and movements of the material world that could be measured.

Color, taste, sound, and smell should be ignored – they were merely mental

projections. What you saw with your own eyes, what you heard with your own ears,

what you tasted, touched, or smelled was replaced with analysis and theory.

Feelings, motives, intentions, personal experience, responsibility, and spirit

were cast out from the realm of scientific investigation.

Analysis, objectivity, and detachment, became the principles of science to be

taught for the next 500 years, but these practices may be root causes of our

separation from the natural world. Next week we will look at whether or not

there should be a manned space program and how heart and spirit can be brought

back into the practice of science.

RESOURCES

1. See full coverage of the Columbia tragedy at:

http://www.space.com/columbiatragedy/

2. Read the Culture Change newsletter at: http://www.culturechange.org

3. Find out more about the Canadian Harp Seal hunt from the International Fund

for Animal Welfare at: http://www.ifaw.org/page.asp?unitid=34

4. Keep up on the real stories behind the possible war with Iraq from Truthout

at: http://www.truthout.org/

5. Become part of the peace movement. Visit: http://www.nonviolence.org/iraq/

6. Find out who your elected representatives are and contact them. Tell them we

must begin waging peace now. You can find them at

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html

{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author

of " Healing Our World " , A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light, " available

at: http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html or your local bookstore. His new

book of photographs and thoughts on interconnectedness, “Of This Earth,

Reflections on Connections,” is now available. Learn about it at:

http://ofthisearth.org. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him

at: jackie and visit his website at:

http://www.healingourworld.com}

 

 

 

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