The Culture of Science (Thoughts on the Decadal Survey)

The global astronomy community is buzzing this week after the publication at last of the Decadal Survey for Astronomy & Astrophysics by the US National Academy of Sciences, which will serve as a roadmap for US astronomy for the coming decade. Following a flurry of tweets and live blogs during the presentation of the report by the Chair of the review, Prof Roger Blandford, which was broadcast live on the web, I’m sure the report will be read, chewed over, and discussed at length online in the weeks to come (see e.g. here, here, here, here); if you’re interested, the report is publicly available here, all 225 pages of it – happy reading.

It’s also worth noting that the European astronomy community produced a similar document, the Astronet roadmap, in 2008. The report, equally beefy, is available from the Astronet website.

I just finished reading In Bluebeard’s Castle, a collection of lectures by George Steiner from 1971, presented as  “Notes towards a Redefinition of Culture”. Steiner is a fascinating writer, he displays an huge breadth of knowledge in his writing. When commenting on a concept as broad as that of “culture”, this allows him to create connections between the many aspects that it encompasses in original and exciting ways. The World Wars and the Holocaust feature heavily in his writing, and indeed WWII serves as a pivotal point in his discussion.

In the first essays of the book, Steiner performs a kind of literary archaeology, highlighting certain social movements and worldviews of the late-18th and 19th centuries, as they are reflected in literary works and philosophic writings of the time. Much of what he talks about in these lectures, the rapid pace of progress that characterised the Romantic era and the dynamism it brought to Western society, would, by the way, really appeal to anyone who read and enjoyed the excellent book The Age of Wonder. Later he talks about the horrors of WWII, and how they fundamentally changed the notion of culture in the post-war era.

The World Wars, he argues, once and for all destroyed the chain of tradition that typefied our Western culture, and a post-culture has emerged from the wreckage that no longer carries the confidence in a better future. And he identifies two new literacies that have risen from the ashes of our pre-war culture: that of music, through modern technology available to all; and that of science and technology, enabled by the computing revolution (remember – this was written in 1971).

Reading this made me wonder: how have political events in the last 60 years affected science and astronomy? Let’s look at the outcome of the Decadal Survey, for example. Why did the panels prioritise the “top” areas? The outcomes of the survey are the result of almost 2 years of consultation amongst the best and brightest in the US community, these scientists are supremely aware of the problems and opportunities that we face in astronomy. Yet these senior astronomers too are embedded in the fabric of society. It would be naive to think that they are unaffected by societal and political movements that aren’t in se related to astronomy. How do their choices and recommendations reflect the time we live in?

Consider the consistently high priority given to exoplanet research, and the detection of Earth-like, potentially habitable, exoplanets in particular, by funding agencies and in the popular media. We could easily ascribe this to a certain disillusionment with our own world: despite all our progress, we’re destroying our planet at an ever-increasing rate, and the new globalised world is still a hugely divided and dissonant place. Is our fascination with new worlds simply a sign that we’re tired and depressed at the sight of our own?

In the introduction to his Spheres trilogy (not available in English, German here, Dutch here), German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk talks about the Earth’s climate. Since Copernicus, he argues, science has removed our planet ever further from the central position it so long inhabited in the known Universe. The Sun rose and set around the Earth, the planets moved around us along the heavenly sphere. Modern cosmology has left humanity feeling a little chilly and exposed in the presence of a cold dark expanse. The atmosphere acts as our protecting sheath, the womb that feeds us, our final immune system. With this picture he places our obsession with the changing climate in a broader context of our changing society and world view. He elaborates on the idea in the second part of the trilogy but at my current reading rate I don’t expect to reach that before 2011 – it’s a hefty tome.

While our fight against climate change and disease have a fundamental goal that is easily grasped on a very basic level – the survival of the species – the driving forces behind astronomy are less clear. The pathway from understanding dark energy to improving the human condition is certainly more convoluted. We talk about goals and priorities, but what is the goal, and how will the priorities for the next decade help us achieve it?

Big Data got a huge vote of confidence in the Decadal Survey, with large-scale surveys topping the priority rankings for both ground- and space-based future facilities. Why are we convinced that the answer lies in the collection of more photons, the generation of more data, than we can ever dream to inspect, let alone analyse or sensibly interpret, by the current cohort of scientists? The idea that we should collect more data just because we can seems a little simplistic. Have we lost faith in imagination and creativity?

Perhaps, Steiner suggests,

We shall [...] open the last door in the castle even if it leads, perhaps because it leads, onto realities which are beyond the reach of human comprehension and control. We shall do so with that desolate clairvoyance, so marvelously rendered in Bartók’s music, because opening doors is the tragic merit of our identity.

We find ourselves today on the cusp of new breakthroughs in the fundamental understanding of the Universe. In 10 years’ time the Standard Model of particle physics may well have been tweaked, we are likely to know what the nature is of dark matter, perhaps understand dark energy. Looking back on the early 21st century, how will the 25th century historians and philosophers of science interpret our scientific activities and achievements in the context of the geopolitical and geo-economic situation? How will these new discoveries redefine our culture?

Maybe the goal, as they say, is in the journey. And the fact that we’re undertaking it despite the lack of evidence that it will render our lives more peaceful or more prosperous,  all the more admirable.