I just flipped through the WeChat collection in the morning and saw an article published by the People's Daily on April 7, titled "People's Daily Call for Papers| How to improve our scientific quality? 》。 This is a call for papers, and the first paragraph of the opening paragraph is:
Without the general improvement of the scientific quality of the whole people, it will be difficult to build a large army of high-quality innovations and realize the rapid transformation of scientific and technological achievements. The "14th Five-Year Plan" plan and the outline of long-term goals for 2035 clearly state that it is necessary to "extensively carry out science popularization activities, strengthen the guidance and cultivation of young people's interest in science, form a social atmosphere of loving science and advocating innovation, and improve the scientific quality of the whole people."
Recalling what I have seen and heard on the Internet over the years, I feel that there are really not many people with scientific literacy in society. For example, I remember a few years ago, I saw a vote on Baidu on "whether to believe in reincarnation", and the result of the vote was that 86% of people believed in reincarnation. And I recently wrote a popular science article about qigong "I was a qigong fan, and finally found out that qigong is fake", unsurprisingly, almost all readers firmly believe that "external qi must exist". This shows that the power of superstition is still very large, the construction of spiritual civilization still needs to be improved, and the general scientific literacy of the people is really worrying.
Such qigong is actually a performance
Some people will say that it doesn't matter that national scientific literacy is a little worse? Of course there is a relationship. Science is the foundation of democracy. Science can also influence decision-making. If the general scientific literacy of a country's citizens is very low, it will take detours and evil roads in many decisions.
I will give a few examples, due to the long drought in tamil nadu in India, the local government planned to build a water storage lake, but because the local people are more superstitious, thinking that the construction of the water storage lake will anger the gods, they are collectively and firmly opposed. In the end, Tamil Nadu did nothing and food production was severely reduced. China has carried out a big project in Guizhou Province's Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, that is, to build a 500-meter-aperture spherical radio telescope that can detect pulsars, which is very helpful for scientists to explore the origin and evolution of the universe. This equipment is known as the "Chinese Heavenly Eye", and the construction has enabled Guizhou Province to develop into an international first-class astronomical exchange center and a research center for world astronomy in a relatively short period of time. Construction began on 25 March 2011 and was scheduled to be completed in early 2014. However, surprisingly, the local mountain people often obstructed the construction of the building on the grounds of "damaging feng shui", and even directly blocked the passage of the construction convoy. Due to these negative disturbances, the construction of the project can only be intermittent, and it will not be officially opened until January 11, 2020.
Trump
Another typical example is why US President Trump, who left his post on January 20 this year, has done a very bad job in a series of major decisions such as climate agreements and epidemic prevention, which is also closely related to his poor personal scientific literacy. How high can a man who openly hires wizards as advisers to "exorcise evil spirits" in the White House be? Since scientific epidemic prevention decisions were not taken at the beginning, how many more tens of thousands of people died in the United States? Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, was also not very scientifically literate, slashing NASA's research funding less than one-twelfth of its funding during the Kennedy administration, causing many science projects to stagnate or simply die. Even funding for the Asteroid Warning Center has been cut by a large margin, and the agency's role is to closely monitor asteroids and comets within the solar system, allowing for weeks in advance to predict the risk of asteroids and other celestial bodies colliding with Earth.
Therefore, whether science can be respected, and whether decision-makers have a certain degree of scientific literacy, can determine the rise and fall of a country or even mankind.
So, how can we improve our scientific quality? In front of answering this question, we need to figure out: what scientific literacy is.
Scientific literacy is not the same as academic qualifications, titles, or even how much scientific knowledge is mastered. Science literacy is actually a way of knowing. In other words, scientific literacy is a kind of human truth.
Now is a society of information explosion, new scientific knowledge is emerging in an endless stream, and no one can master everything. Nor do we need to come up with a so-called "standard answer" for scientific literacy. Some knowledge points have been listed before, saying that as long as citizens master them, they are equivalent to scientific literacy. As a result, because the "five elements of yin and yang" were listed, it caused a huge controversy. If you really want to list some knowledge points, it can be described as a variety of opinions. But I think that in fact, giving knowledge points is not the most important, mastering certain ways of understanding, or understanding the principles of being a person is the most critical factor.
I repeat: scientific literacy is the best way to know, the best way to behave.
May I ask, if a person only has a junior high school education and he is not engaged in scientific research in a scientific research institution, can he have scientific literacy?
On the other hand, a person is a university professor, and even achieved the level of academician, writings and so on. But he worships Nan Huaijin as a teacher, and he is also superstitious about the so-called "Quantum Buddhism", does he have scientific literacy?
Zhu Qingshi
The answer is: this person with a junior high school education, as long as he is trained in thinking, can also have excellent scientific literacy. He could even kill the academician behind him in a second.
Superstition makes you a ghost, science makes you a person, a good person.
Why can an ordinary person with a junior high school education beat an academician in a second? Because this person has mastered the correct way of knowing things.
The world is very complex, all kinds of illusions, superstitions, lies are intertwined, many pseudo-experts will also pretend to be science, how can a person "not be afraid of floating clouds to cover his eyes, and be at the highest level"? He must first firmly adhere to one of the most basic principles, that is, to affirm that "scientific conclusions are one." No other conclusions other than scientific conclusions are recognized. For example, in addition to science, there are religions, philosophies, metaphysics, witchcraft, etc., which are different ways of knowing things, but in the field of knowledge, we must adhere to scientific cognition as the best way to obtain knowledge. Science does not seek truth, truth is a religious category, but the scientific method is the most reliable. The conclusions of science in one field of knowledge are the most reliable conclusions, and the other conclusions are not worthy of attention.
Let me summarize it simply: beyond scientific conclusions, there are no conclusions.
Not only are scientific conclusions unary, but we must also admit that even philosophy is relatively low-level. I have always not supported ordinary people to specialize in any philosophy. Because there is no need. Philosophy does not matter if it is correct, because philosophy itself does not have an empirical function, and philosophy has no empirical necessity in terms of definition. When science enters a certain field of original philosophical thinking, philosophy withdraws. By the end of 19 years, philosophy had been unable to keep up with the development of science, and this trend would expand in the future. The shortcomings of philosophy are too great. Now materialist dialectics is the pinnacle of philosophical development. In the future, if philosophy is scientificized, it can continue for a period of time, but at present philosophy has "died", and it can even be said that there are many fallacies. In fact, we see that on many social questions philosophy is reactionary and grossly misleading. For example, a superstitious academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who believes in witchcraft has always advocated "insisting on philosophy" rather than "insisting on science." All the "unsafe" cases raised by anti-GMO activists on the Internet have all been refuted by the scientific community, and they have not been able to mention any more examples, so they try to oppose it from a "philosophical" point of view. For example, in "The Tao Fa Is Natural, So Should We Resist GMOs?" In the article "Your Culture Is Too Low", I exposed a nonsense person who talks nonsense about philosophy.
I make this generalization: Any humanities discipline, including philosophy, that attempts to separate from science is bound to be antiscientific.
I believe that as long as you master the above two points of understanding, you can have a qualified scientific literacy.
In addition, I also said that scientific literacy is also the truth of knowing how to be a person.
Why is scientific literacy related to the "principle of being a human being"?
I wrote in "My Opinion: Should Popularizers Defend Japanese Nuclear Sewage and 731?" The article explains:
The purpose of popular science genetically modified organisms is not to sell products to people and encourage everyone to eat, but to provide a scientific and rational way of thinking, so that more people can go from the fanatical "scolding every turn" after accepting popular science propaganda, become calm and rational, and learn to think independently: "Why is it that some of the self-media and the mainstream scientific community are diametrically opposed? Why do all the authorities around the world say good things about GMOs? Should I wait and see? Is it not necessary to wait for the conclusion of other scientific structures? Is it a conversation with biomolecular breeding scientists? I can no longer casually scold scientists, what if I am wrong and mistakenly injure a good person who has the heart of a fist to repay the country? In this way, the purpose of popular science has been achieved. Popular science is not to force you to instill any knowledge, but to teach you to be less blind and impulsive, to be a rational gentleman with good intentions, who knows how to analyze independently, who will calmly wait and see under chaotic public opinion, and who is afraid of hurting good people by mistake. In other words, science popularization is to make good people better.
The above shows that a person with good scientific literacy can completely not understand a certain aspect of scientific knowledge. For example, he can not know that the original GM Is 100% can be retained, he can not know the difference between hybrid breeding and GM breeding, he can not know that the phenomenon of transgenic gmism in the natural world has lasted for more than 3 billion years on a large scale, he can not know that the use of glyphosate is 20 years earlier than the cultivation of genetically modified crops, he can not know the global scientific consensus on the safety of GM, he can not know that the original Chinese government strictly legislated 20 years ago to formulate a mandatory labeling list, He can not know how to correctly query SCI papers, he can not even understand foreign languages, can not go to Google Academic..... This knowledge does not need to be mastered by ordinary people all the time, and there is no need for that. All people are not gods and can know everything.
But a person with good moral character, when he or she encounters a controversial topic, should first admit that "I myself do not fully understand it", even if I have some doubts in my heart, I cannot immediately solve the ideological troubles, and out of respect for science, I should also have a mentality - "Wait, look again, wait and see"; "If I immediately take sides, will I mistakenly hurt good people?" So I'm going to be a little more cautious. That's certainly true. ”
If this is the case, even if this person comes into contact with the indistinguishable information from some self-media, he will have doubts in his heart for a while and a half, and he will look at things with a benevolent heart and tolerance, rather than immediately breaking his mouth and scolding. This avoids being deceived to the greatest extent possible, and it is not easy to hurt good people, especially respectable scientists.
A stubborn, wind-and-rain man who never doubts or thinks independently, I do not recognize him as having a sound personality, and I do not recognize his passing personality. Scientific literacy is actually to make people have such a basic ability: know how to be a good person, to be a qualified person.
Pseudo-expert
Not only is it to understand GMOs, but also ordinary people who encounter pseudo-health products packaged by high-tech concepts should also have this attitude. An old man who has no relevant scientific knowledge, for the words of the "expert", does not know the authenticity of his statement for a while, but absolutely does not blindly believe anyone, but waits, asks again, does not immediately take out the wallet, can avoid being deceived. There are also those who spend a lot of money to enroll in "parent-child devotional" training courses, and they should do the same.
We think in reverse, assuming that all people in society do not respect science, scientific literacy is generally very low, are "listening to the wind is rain", one is more solipsistic, each blind arrogance and self-confidence, are taking metaphysics, philosophy to deny scientific conclusions, scientists are overthrown, what will eventually lead to the results? It must be: materialistic, black and white upside down, black and white miasma.
Author: Skeptical Explorer