Dixie Lee Ray Quotes
The general public has long been divided into two parts those who think science can do anything, and those who are afraid it will.
Ray, Dixy Lee, and Lou Guzzo. Trashing the Planet: How Science Can Help Us Deal with Acid Rain, Depletion of the Ozone, and Nuclear Waste (Among Other Things). Regnery Gateway, 1990.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
Most scientists do not have the skill or the totality of knowledge to accurately predict the effect of scientific research and learning on society. Many are not interested. Those who try to communicate with politicians and the public are usually met with indifference or suspicion. Above all, the scientific and mathematical literacy of the public is so weak, that it is impossible in much of science to even explain the science to the lay public much less explain its implications. Soddy was a bit of an idealist from a class society and he felt the upper classes should be better informed by scientists.
In the French Revolutionary reign of terror, people were settling old scores and denouncing anyone they had an issue with as anti-revolutionary. And nobility were extremely suspect. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) was not only a great scientist but a wealthy noble who also was an expert on government finance and had served as a tax collector. Lavoisier’s defense was that he could finish his scientific experiments that the whole world could benefit from. Ironically, 3 months after Lavoisier was beheaded, the judge himself was denounced by an enemy and he too was sent to the guillotine.
We have two opposite dynamics operating today. On the one hand the scientific breakthroughs like Quantum Mechanics and genetic engineering widen the intellectual gap immensely between the average person (and politicians) and the scientist—at a time when society must make enormous decisions on scientific matters. On the other hand, there have never been so many people before educated in the sciences. There are many (not a majority) high school students who today understand Relativity and even well and broadly educated non-science college graduates are often familiar with Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and other scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. The world as a whole has never had so many scientifically literate people as today, nor has it ever had so many scientifically illiterate people today.
For many people, especially, bright and educated people, science has been an escape from unstable, political situations.
Dixy Lee Ray was an American scientist and politician who served as the 17th Governor of the U.S. state of Washington. Variously described as idiosyncratic, and "ridiculously smart," she was the state's first female governor and was in office during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. She was a supporter of atomic energy.
