Fighting Words

Words matter to scientists. The scientific method is a structure through which scientists test theories through experiment, and then share the results with other scientists.

Do words matter? They matter to the world’s great religions. In the Book of Exodus in the Bible—sacred text for Jews, Muslim’s, and Christians—God speaks, and there is light. The Gospel of John begins with, In the beginning was the Word. The Buddhist Sutras lead followers to enlightenment. The epic poem Mahabharata is a central narrative for Hindus.

And words matter to scientists. The scientific method is a structure through which scientists test theories through experiment, and then share the results with other scientists. Science moves forward inch by inch with every paper printed in a journal or delivered at a conference.

Without words, we wouldn’t be human. Our great democracy is based on the    power of words—the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. We are inspired by words—the Gettysburg Address, Shakespeare. Lucille Clifton,  a poet that I got to know and love through the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and who died recently at the age of 74, wrote short, simple, powerful poems that turned conventional interpretations of the Bible upside down. (In one poem she quotes from the Book of Samuel, David has slain his ten thousands—he was a mercenary before he was a king.)

A recent Supreme Court decision that gave corporations the same free speech rights as individuals has me worried. It equates money with words. Is one person’s ability to persuade another, or a nation, equal to a corporation’s ability to flood the media with sound bites that tend to distort the truth as much as enlighten us? (“Heresy” means emphasizing one aspect of the truth to the exclusion of all others; it doesn’t mean an out-and-out lie as many people think. Just as pornography is emphasizing one aspect of our humanity to the exclusion of others. Pornography sells.)

If you read all the Gospels you get a sense of what Jesus was about. He rarely mentioned sex, never talked about birth control; but he talked a lot about the danger of money and power. Jesus was harder on the religious leaders of his time than he was on tax collectors and prostitutes. (To the Pharisees he says You clean the outside of cup and plate [obey the letter of the law and what people can see] but inside you are all corruption.) He knew that wealth and the power it conveys corrupts. He stood for the power of persuasion and not force. He led by example and spoke of the power of love and forgiveness. Jesus became angry when he saw powerful people abusing the weak and vulnerable.

Those of us who believe in the power of words—scientists included—have our work cut out for us. There’s a lot of money being spent to distort the truth. For example, “death panels”—the claim that the Obama health proposal advocates the government to pull the plug on Grandma—and the claim by some of late that the snow storms on the East Coast are proof against global climate change. But we have the power of words on our side. We’ll need it. A headline in Thursday’s New York Times online reads, “Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets.”

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