By Shawn Otto (US-Science Debate)
Powerful ideas attract their own supporters. One such idea that is slowly beginning to attract international attention is the idea of Science Debates. Most of the world’s great challenges now revolve around science policy issues, yet we are paralyzed on many of them because of politics, particularly because science has ceded a certain measure of the public definition of reality to ideologues who define it using “but faith or opinion, but not knowledge,” to quote John Locke, whose seminal work centered around avoiding such paralysis. Science debates bring policymakers together with science and the public, highlighting key knowledge issues and helping to break logjams.
I was at the EuroScience Open Forum this last week in Torino, Italy, heading up a panel on the Science Debate movement, talking about its beginnings as a grassroots US science initiative, and why it is important to global policymaking in the 21st century. There is a video here: The Missing Mediator – Science Debates in a Knowledge society
Several countries have already had science debates patterned on the one we (with your support) organized together, here in the U.S. in 2008, and more are planned.
For those who are interested, I wrote a 5-part popular science and travel reporting series on the trip, and on the ins and outs of scientists engaging in the public dialog, called Postings from Italy, below. Perhaps it will be enjoyable weekend reading.
Lost luggage, science debates and ‘green porn’ in Italy’s former capital
‘Angels and Demons’ journey: Traveling to see the Large Hadron Collider
Italian trains, superconductors, the wonders of deodorant and rocks on strings
Leonardo da Vinci, knowledge engineering, Debate 2.0 and summer on the Adriatic
Science and politics in the birthplace of the Enlightenment
Tags: ESOF, Italy, Large Hadron collider, LHC, Missing Mediator, Science Debate, Shawn Otto, Turin, Venice
2010-11-12 at 18:26
DEN SLUTLIGA LÖSNINGEN AV PYRAMIDMAKTHAVERI-ELÄNDET :?: