Oogiantheorem: Examining the History of Sci & Med

Here’s an oldie. I did this for history of science before I was even interested, lol.

Edit: I found the mark I got on this while digging through my papers…. EW….just ew… it looks like I made a few too many generalizations and major claims for the lack of evidence I gave. I’m pretty sure that my writing  has improved since this essay, thankfully!

Critiques and Action Against Big Science

Before the 1940’s the world survived without Big Science. It was a world with simple sciences, but for some scientists, experiments without new, large, costly technologies would not let them prove their hypotheses. Theoretical science had to be proven. With the emergence of Big Science during the time of the Second World War, a scientific renaissance came to an end, and from the remnants of the renaissance arose terrifying weapons and technologies that some people feared would destroy the world. Big Science may have been created with the intention of the overall betterment of society, but its momentum lead to secrecy and corruption with the potential of destroying humanity.

 The main opinion of those who were against Big Science was that a world without Big Science would be a less complex world to deal with. Starting with the Manhattan Project near the end of World War Two, Big Science bred secrecy in government, enough that Truman did not know about the Manhattan Project when he was Vice President of the United States of America. In the beginning, American politicians agreed with the secrecy if it meant that it would end the war favorably for the Allied Forces, with America leading the victory. Scientists used the secrecy of the Manhattan Project to expand human knowledge. It was when that secrecy got out of control in the 1960’s and 1970’s and other secrets were devised having to do with Big Science that social thinkers got involved bringing forth ways to put an end to Big Science.

Citizens found ways to slow the momentum of Big Science initiatives by organizing against them in protest and finding loopholes in the safety of such projects. When Pacific Gas And Electric devised a plan to dump nuclear waste in the public community of Bodega Bay, the citizens of the city rose up in fear for their families’ health. At first they could do nothing to stop the possible dumping of harmful substances on their land except protest and educate people of the dangers of nuclear waste. People from as far as San Francisco helped with their protest. Their land was finally saved and eventually turned into a park when they brought in a trained professional to assess the land as a possible nuclear waste dumping ground. The citizens were relieved to learn that the ground underneath the possible dumping site was directly underneath the San Andreas Fault, and therefore not suitable for storing nuclear waste. They won their battle against a possibly harmful result of Big Science, but their battle would not have been possible without help from politicians informing the public of secrets hidden about big Science.

 It was a major deviation from the justified secrecy during the time of the Manhattan Project when fifteen years later Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech warning the people of America of Big Science’s undemocratic nature, and how it could lead to the corruption of America. Propaganda of the dangers of the byproducts of nuclear energy, atomic bombs, and government conspiracies had already swept the media by that time, but Eisenhower’s speech empowered the propaganda to continue. Meanwhile scientific groups such as The New Earth Alchemists and The Whole Earth Network researched forms of technology against Big Science. They believed in the preservation of society without nuclear bombs. Figures such as Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marques, Lewis Mumford, John Todd, and Buckminster Fuller were forerunners in spreading Big Science Anti-culture, new technologies and initiatives against the atomic bomb. Some of them, like Buckminster Fuller, believed in the progression of science through man’s control of the world, but that control was not to be abused by building technologies that could potentially bring about the destruction of the world.

Places such as Nelson, British Columbia thrive today because of the anti-culture of Big Science. Communes were built to demonstrate that society could be self-sufficient and could progress naturally without Big Science. The communes used the Whole Earth Catalogue to buy what they needed to live.  With the catalogue one could buy building tools, garden seeds, newspapers, technologies to create wind power and solar power, and more to be shipped to the communes easily by mail. Simple machines and alternative energy sources were used to replace the large scale energy sources that Big Science created, but when people in the communes discovered that it was hard to build a house, how unsatisfactory it was to use solar or wind power, and how much work it took to live self-sufficiently, the communes modernized.

The momentum of Big Science never came to an end, and neither did the secrecy that it caused. Experiments go wrong and loved ones of those who died in the experiments never get explanations of what truly happened. Weapons of mass destruction still exist, some even more terrifying than the atomic bomb. Wars have occurred because of such weapons. The communes devised to set examples of how to save the planet failed, and for the most part, so has the anti-culture of Big Science. The people who won their battles against Big Science may have cities free of nuclear waste, but nothing could help them if a nuclear bomb exploded in their backyard. Even if the entire world became wind powered, or solar powered nothing could stop the pursuit of knowledge to know everything about planet Earth and beyond. The momentum of Big Science will never cease until it destroys the world.