DUMB, DUMBER?

Dick Pountain/25 June 1998/Idealog 47

Is our culture really in the process of 'dumbing down'? The evidence is ambiguous to say the least. "Vindaloo", Chris Evans and the Spice Girls might suggest that an epidemic of pre-pre-senile dementia is raging, but on the other hand you have books about Fermat's Last Theorem topping the non-fiction lists and people down the pub arguing about who is righter about evolution, Richard Dawkins or Steven Jay Gould. A statistician might suggest that contradictory signals like these mean we are actually observing two different but co-existent populations, one getting steadily dumber and the other getting smarter, but I don't really think we can weasel out of the issue quite that easily.

It feels to me as if everyone is developing a deep ambivalence about science; they like it a lot when it gives them the mobile phone or Viagra, but they dislike it equally intensely when it tells them they can't lose weight by wishful thinking, or that they have less chance of winning the lottery than being hit by a meteorite. The whole notion of scientific objectivity seems to be falling out of favour, to be displaced by a hedonistic, touchy-feely sort of hyper-individualism which holds that science is too impersonal, and that human relationships (to be more precise, one's own relationships) are far more important than any 'cold' facts. This view was forcefully put in a recent Guardian article (Online section 25th June) by the novelist Lucy Ellman, in which she asked "why not admit that Science is simply the last male stronghold, an escapist hobby for those not fully preoccupied with football?". Ellman also claimed that science is trivial - on the grounds that Lord Winston acts like a prat in the BBC's "The Human Body" series - and that all those Stephens (Hawking, Jay Gould, Pinker, and Jones) write their pop science books just to show off how smart they are. The grim truth is that they write those books mainly for the money, most scientists being worse paid than the lowliest of media hacks (check the job ads in New Scientist if you don't believe me).   

There have of course always been irrationalists - Romantics, Creationists, New Agers - who need to believe in crystals and astrology, but it's disturbing when ostensibly intelligent commentators like Ellman start spouting this stuff. She at least has the good taste to acknowledge that Primo Levi was a wonderful writer who "made a great case in "The Periodic Table" for [science's] power to subvert political evils", but she appears unwilling to conclude from this that it was also basically thanks to science that we no longer burn witches (I'm not entirely sure that science felt 'trivial' to Galileo as he sat before the Inquisition either). Of course Ellman's article was meant mostly as a wind-up (I hope), but it still has an effect on readers, tipping further the balance of their ambivalence. In the same week as Ellman's article, the Guardian also carried a story about the appalling standard of medical research papers, with a claim that now only "5% of published articles reach minimum standards of scientific soundness". Last year Brunel University suspended Physics and Mathematics courses because of lack of applicants. The level of fraud and plagiarism in medicine and the physical sciences has never been higher. For a while after the 2nd World War it really looked possible that the whole population might become scientifically literate, but we seem to be slipping away from that possibility at a frightening rate.

For me learning science was the most liberating of experiences, and I still get a sensuous pleasure just from knowing why things happen - why the sky is blue, roses are red and why Camembert goes squishy - that has nothing whatever to do with showing off to other people. Clearly my experience is no longer typical, and young people are becoming convinced that science is dull, uncool and unsexy. Whether this is due to bad teaching or media overexposure is a moot point, but I have a paranoid theory that I'll gladly share with you. Back in Victorian times the ruling political elite saw high culture (both in arts and sciences) as providing a useful moral framework that promoted order and 'improvement' as an antidote to the dangerously anarchic ribaldry of popular culture. (This strategy achieved its zenith with the founding of the BBC under Lord Reith). However our new rulers, the media barons, do not share this attitude at all; they long ago realised that popular culture is not only entirely safe and malleable but also immensely profitable. The beautiful twist is that they can thus present themselves as populist rebels by attacking that very same high culture that once served as their bulwark against anarchy. Hence their organs of opinion, the tabloids and TV, promote a cult of hedonism that portrays anything too serious (like science) as strictly for the nerds. High culture is already being consigned to a tiny niche, an expensive luxury for 'elitists' like me. Flame off.

The idea of a whole generation being put off science is quite frightening, not just because someone has to learn how to make computers and mobile phones rather than just playing with them, but also because it's awfully easy to become blase about the part that scientific rationality has played in liberalising our society. There are plenty of people in world, fundamentalists of all descriptions, who would be only too glad to see us drop our rational guard.