Vis Viva and Imponderable Fluids: Thoughts on Science Literacy

Science literacy — or rather, the lack of it — surfaced again last week with press reports of recent college graduates unable to explain, as were their peers in a famous 1988 Harvard survey, that changes in the seasons are a result of the Earth's tilt, not its distance from the sun.

Fears about the metastasizing of America's scientific ignorance have been growing for the last 25 years with good reason. The most recent surveys from various scientific organizations reveal that only a third of our fellow citizens can explain what studying something scientifically means. Most cannot define a molecule. One-third of Americans also reject evolution outright, putting this country in a virtual tie with Turkey.

We can, of course, quibble about what constitutes scientific literacy ("Name the noble gases" or "Does phlogiston exist?") and who or what is to blame for public ignorance. But before pointing too many fingers, keep in mind that a 2001 Research!America study found that 42 percent of scientists did not engage in public outreach of any kind, in large part because they were too busy or didn't care.

So what standards can we use to judge science literacy? A quick Internet search reveals a number of differently worded, but reasonable examples. Here are just a few.

To be scientifically literate, you should be able to:

• Ask, find or determine answers to questions derived from curiosity about everyday experiences.
• Describe, explain and predict natural phenomena.
• Read, with understanding, articles about science in the popular press, and engage in social conversation about the validity of the conclusions.
• Identify scientific issues underlying national and local decisions, and express positions that are scientifically and technologically informed.
• Evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it.

Writers like me who have made their careers reporting and, to a degree, canonizing science are presumed to be scientifically literate. And, truth be told, most do not disappoint. For some, literacy is a matter of previous scientific training. For others who come to science writing through other doors — I was a history and political science major, for example — literacy comes through osmosis, repetition and frequent refreshers.

Science, for me, was an acquired taste. So I look for primers that excite my curiosity and serve as quick reference texts. Some of the best are edited for curious adolescents. My particular favorite, found on a sale table a couple of years ago, is called Science Explorer, part of an Eyewitness Books series originally printed in England by Dorling Kindersley.

Divided into large topic chapters (Energy, Light, Chemistry, Force and Motion) with double spreads on specific areas (What Drives a Reaction?, Particles and Waves, Circuits and Conductors, Electricity and Medicine), the book is richly illustrated, fully cross-referenced and divided into factoids about the irregular back-and-forth of scientific discovery that even the easily bored would find hard to resist.

Some examples:

• Evidence from caves in China suggests that fire was first used for cooking 500,000 years ago.
• In the 17th century, the famous German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz postulated that objects contained vis viva, a living force that, in fact, turned out to be conceptually similar to what became known as kinetic energy more than a century later.
• Most Enlightenment scientists thought that light, heat, magnetism and electricity were made of particles and that to produce their effects, these forces had to be fluid, weightless and able to penetrate objects. Each effect was carried out by what came to be called "imponderable fluids." The scientists turned out to be wrong, of course, but let's applaud them for creating one of the most artful labels in branding history.
• The new science "iatrochemistry" arose in 16th-century Europe from the belief that the human body was a chemical system that could be cured with chemicals. In 1597, Andreas Libavius published one of the first chemical textbooks, Alchemia.
• The use of symbols for chemicals arose because of alchemists' desire to keep their discoveries secret.
• The father of chemistry, Antoine Lavoisier, who named oxygen and analyzed atmospheric air with a series of novel experiments, was guillotined during the French Revolution.

While Lavoisier was killed because he was an aristocrat and the beneficiary of tax collections and not because he was a scientist, the fact remains that science will always be political because, collectively, it is something of a vis viva. And living forces, by their nature, stir change, challenge the status quo and make us think.

Clearly, not everyone thinks that science is worth the trouble or relevant to his or her life. But we cannot throw in the towel. It is the responsibility of scientists and science writers to keep explaining what scientists do — why it's important, why science sometimes gets it wrong (those imponderable fluids again) and, yes, why it's exciting. Maybe then we will nurture the kind of curiosity about the world that will make the public eager to know more.

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