We live, as the Chinese proverb admonishes, in “interesting” times.
Who can successfully process all the news that’s fit to print, as the New York Times reminds us? I am growing older; the desire to know all the facts seems to quickly diminish in the more satisfying impact of quick, emotional impressions. Perhaps I’m chronically drawn to the sky because it remains an unending source of visual, yet subtle wonder.
The shabby artifice of our entertainment industry offers no context within the truth of astronomy I know and love. Let me offer some examples in the light of the September Sun, the autumnal Sun, the Equinocturnal Sun, the Virgin Sun. Aroostook Skies in September herald a change of seasons and a quiet urgency stirs within our hearts. A million memories engage our senses. Nothing which I share or suggest demands great privilege or wealth. Choose for yourselves.
Take the Sun itself. Viewed through a pane of no. 14 welder’s glass, I not only marvel at its circular perfections, but also am delighted and amazed to see a steady stream of sunspot dotting and blemishing the solar disk on a regular basis. A clearly defined black dot of magnetic disturbance appears to the unaided eye. Watch it traverse the solar face over seven days in September. Do you wonder why geometry is a school age requirement?
I believe the Ancients viewed the circular Sun as an uncanny geometric marvel. Nothing else in nature could mimic its preeminence. Those early mathematicians, Archimedes and Euclid, for example, unquestionably drew inspiration from their observations to boldly put forth their postulates concerning the mathematical characteristics of circles. Quantities like circumference, area, radius, and the irrational pi all perhaps were investigated, sparked from initial celestial observations. I do not believe that any of these insights were the privilege of a tiny elite of Greek genius. They were just a bunch of guys and gals hungry for truth. The technologies of a hundred industries now depend upon geometric laws. Schoolchildren, whether conscience of not, trust teachers to groom them, through test and quiz, to accept if not participate in the technological applications scraping the skies and gorging the ground.
The technological achievements then become the measure the icons of our lives. This inverted thinking will cost us dearly in the years ahead. Or at least until we can emancipate ourselves from worshipping the idols of scientific application and return now to the natural truths which we unlocked step by step through the centuries. How can we tear down the idols? I am in favor of any movement which can democratize science to people at large. We must forge a new grassroots effort to bring science down the to the citizen. The feeling of power must root in the truth of scientific investigation and, above all, experience. The challenge rests in bringing these experiences to everyday folks on a consistent basis. Otherwise, we will succumb to pseudoscientific entertainment to offer ersatz satisfaction responding to the legitimate hunger for scientific wonder.
What will we need to kindle a like-minded hunger and curiosity? In the realm of popular thought, most neighbors find science unappealing because it must demand advanced education. Or perhaps nothing more remains to discover — as President Kennedy once orated, “all the horizons have been explored, all the battles have been won.” But science never intended to remains static. The methods of gathering evidence observations, suggesting hypotheses, and conducting experiment benchmarks our tool and technique. The barrenness rests with our lack of imagination to formulate new, thrilling questions. Nature dares us to pose the challenges. The unknown awaits our profile in courage.
Today, science, however, whispers in our ear every time we prepare a meal. Every time we engage our engines and motors and microwaves, and cell phones, science speaks. Science to the popular American life speaks in the language of technology. The technological filter continues to consume us. Personal economies so accelerate our lives that no scheduling permits us the essential pause to question our directions, scientifically speaking. What’s required, more than ever, we must generate a vanguard of pioneer educators who will go into the communities, independent of all formal organization, and bring science to the neighborhoods. The mission must conduct itself with a kind of spontaneity which bridges convention. Such a mission must remain within appropriate boundary, yet dare to innovatively knock on doors where, biblically speaking, left hand is not aware of what the right hand performs.
I believe the rest of my days as an astronomy educator and more, will see me enter your lives in this innovative fashion. Initially, I will begin to offer sidewalk astronomy in pivotal places for wonder and engagement of your “wow” factors. I will utilize a creative blend of resources, both material and personal, to begin our journey toward the “new morning,” a renaissance of legitimate science for you and your families. And brace yourselves. I may introduce the ideal of the “science wagon” a roving activity center for science’s sake.
On Sept. 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of 9/11 saw me glued to the television broadcast from New York City. I watched the poignant procession of men, women, and especially children offer their brief offerings to their loved ones. Who could not witness such a performance without the deepest response from heart and soul? To me, no formal religious puffing could contend with the truth of those people sharing their loss with the nation and the world at large. From the cataclysmic explosions that rocked Americans, from the Maine in Havana Harbor to the shocking assassination of President Kennedy, to the fall of the Twin Towers, our bodies torn and tattered, our minds numb in fear, shock, and horror, our souls scarred even from vast distances, we yearn for healing. Until we discover that antidote, the solar system remains off limits for our people, our civilization. Out of our suffering and healing, we will unlock the truth to settle the planets.
I am not privileged enough to know that time or season of that awakening. All I do know is the inevitability of its arrival. How do I know? At 5 a.m. or so Sunday, at dawn, I witnessed an eastern sky written by a Finger so sublime and refined to defy explanation. It was precisely referred earlier in this essay. The sculpture of the altocumulus clouds, the blend of atmospheric color, the coy covering of the slimmest of waning crescent moons spoke the Answer. Now it’s up to you to find yours.
Larry Berz is director of Easton’s Francis Malcolm Planetarium and astronomy instructor at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
