Earlier this week, while at work, my best friend experienced a brain aneurysm.
She was sent to the regional ER,
who in return rushed her to the trauma center in downtown Atlanta. I was alerted during the ambulance ride, via
a text message while in a meeting on the other coast. During a planned meeting break, the
neurosurgeon from the trauma center called me, explained in layman terms what
happened and what will happen over the next five hours. I was 2,500
miles away at the time, as current commitments were completed in the
foreground, the flight plans were modified in background, on a smartphone. During the meeting no one in the room knew otherwise - other than my boss
because he was notified on his device of my ticket change (>$). The science of wireless technologies took care
of the first task of returning to Atlanta, silently. A task that a generation ago would have taken
at a full day, including having an admin walk into the meeting, interrupt the agenda, and
finally it would have required a public egress from the forum.
While I was on the overnight flight back to Atlanta, she started her recovery from four hours of brain surgery. During the flight I could not sleep and
instead kept myself busy by reading on a
few subjects that are proving to be increasingly relevant in 2017/18; moving
from link to link I stumbled on a 2005 Federal court case. The plaintiff: Keeping science in our public
schools, while detaining pseudoscience at
bay.
By the time I arrived at the trauma center, it was nearly 07:00
the next morning. I walked into her
room, and what my wife said to me reminded me of a quote from the second to the
last paragraph of the court recording I had read a few hours earlier. The counsel for the plaintiff (for science)
summed up the concept of Defendant - Intelligent
Design’s ‘irreducible complexity’, which
the defendant was attempting to push in public schools as “an alternative
viewpoint.” Dressing pseudoscience in science’s wardrobe. Here is the quote:
Thankfully, there are scientists who do search for answers to the questions of the origin of the immune system [and
the brain]. It’s our defense against
debilitating and fatal diseases. The
scientists who wrote those books and articles toil in obscurity, without books
royalties or speaking engagements. Their
efforts help us combat and cure serious medical conditions. By contrast, Professor Behe [pushing ID] and
the entire intelligent design movement are doing nothing to advance scientific
or medical knowledge and are telling future generations of scientists, don’t bother.
This paragraph is meant to force us to discuss the unsatisfying charter of the Intelligent Design (ID) hypothesis. That is the gap though process that allows
us to be okay NOT learning the details of the physical world we live in. In
other words, if the problem is too difficult to solve, file it in the realm of
the supernatural and call it irreducibly
complex. “Do not invest any more time or tax dollars into discovering
how the wing, eye, or human brain evolved; because they are irreducibly complex
and God created them as they are now.” On the eve of 2018; Trumpism has re-introduced the false
equivalence between science and pseudosciences
such as ID.
Back to herstory; The surgeon who performed the work has
spent his career reducing ‘irreducible
complexity’ of the human brain into small
parts using science. . . . After four
hours of surgery and a good nights rest; by the time I traveled back to
Atlanta and made it to the ICU, as I walked in the room my wife said to me: “Since
we now must cancel our Christmas vacation, can you for long last buy me that
pair of Louis Vuitton red bottom shoes?” She
obviously had a quick recovery, and I am hoping a humor recuperation as well. Thank you science!
No comments:
Post a Comment