I hope Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, launched on Fox launched two weeks ago, becomes a smash hit, as much so as the 1980 version of Cosmos, hosted by astrophysicist Carl Sagan. I also hope Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of the new series, uses his star power to ignite a much-needed debate about the militarization of American science.
Tyson, an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, is already one of the most prominent science communicators in the world. And yet he is so focused on celebrating science that he seems loath to delve into linkages—historic and current—between science and war.
In 2011 comedian Stephen Colbert asked Tyson whether scientists deserve to be depicted in movies as bad guys, who “lead us to the Terminator or… create the superbug that wipes out the world.”
Tyson replied: “When you part the curtains, at the bottom of all that, there’s a politician funding that research… We have scientists who invented the bomb, yes, but somebody had to pay for the bomb, and that was taxpayers. There were war bonds. There was a political action that called for it. Everyone blames the scientists.”
Tyson elaborated on these sentiments earlier this year, implying that scientists’ perspective makes them averse to violence. He told Parade Magazine that “when you have a cosmic perspective, when you know how large the universe is and how small we are within it—what Earth looks like from space, how tiny it is in a cosmic void—it’s impossible for you to say, ‘I so don’t like how you think that I’m going to kill you for it.'”
Tyson’s statement is “simply wrong,” historian of science Patrick McCray notes in an online “Letter to Neil deGrasse Tyson.” “Consider just one university—Caltech,” McCray writes. “Its physics department was entirely militarized during World War Two and churned out over 1 million of bombardment rockets. Caltech’s Willy Fowler (Nobel Prize, 1983) did pioneering work on nuclear reactions in stars; he also led a secret 1951 study to promote the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a Soviet attack.”
Tyson’s attempts to distance science from war, McCray adds, represent “a total disservice” to his predecessor Carl Sagan, who “perhaps more than other scientists of his generation, understood and witnessed how his fellow scientists–especially physicists–had contributed to the arms race… Sagan used Cosmos as a warning for how science–as wonderful as it can be–can also be an awful awesome tool when misused or applied without any sense of humanistic temper.”
By “militarization of science,” I mean the skewing of science toward martial ends. According to the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, the 2013 U.S. budget granted $140 billion to all agencies for research and development. More than half of that amount, $71 billion, went to the Defense Department. Another $2.426 billion was allocated to the Department of Energy for “Weapons Activities,” and $729 million went to the Department of Homeland Security for R&D.
Military money supports not only physics but also biology, neuroscience and social sciences. Meanwhile, vanishingly few prominent scientists have taken a strong antiwar stance. Other than, perhaps, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, who is 85, what major scientist today is criticizing U.S. militarism, and raising tough questions about science’s role in perpetuating war? Where is today’s equivalent of Carl Sagan?
Because historically they have benefitted from war, scientists have a special responsibility to seek war’s end. At the very least, scientists should publicly debate the pros and cons of doing war-related research. Tyson would be the ideal moderator for such a debate.
Tyson apparently fears that speaking out about U.S. militarism will undermine his role as a cheerleader for science. According to a recent profile of Tyson in The New Yorker, he “refuses to take explicit political positions in public, or to criticize elected officials, even those who reject evolution; he would rather invest his energies in creating a more enlightened electorate.”
But Tyson’s celebrity also gives him the opportunity to serve as science’s conscience, as Sagan did. As the historian McCray says in his letter to Tyson, “Cosmos and its promotion is going to give you a big bully pulpit. Use it wisely. Use it like Carl Sagan would have.”
*Postscript: In next week’s column, I’ll post Tyson’s surprising response to this column.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one originally published on his Scientific American blog, “Cross-check.”
Be First to Comment