Science used to be my friend, growing up. Science was the smiling, clean-cut guy in the spanking white lab coat with a humorous gleam in his eye. He put test tubes and beakers out for show, and filled them with candy-colored liquids that implicitly promised if I mixed them together very carefully, something nifty would happen, like a big puff of pink smoke, or perhaps some alchemical reaction that would leave gold. Or at least pyrite.
Science, in the picture books of my youth, was always about fixing the future. I loved the illustrations of the moon bases that were just around the corner, or of the sterile and sanitary cutaways of the human cell, neatly diagrammed and explicated in language I could understand. The universe was orderly. Classifiable. Predictable.
These days, however, it seems more as if Science is a bit of a bummer. He’s a big Gloomy Gus, the guy who hangs around parties a little too long and butts in on conversations with people he doesn’t know to remind them that he’s been ignored all evening. No one is really interested in his talk about the nifty new inventions he’s come up with—we take increasing miniaturization and convenience as a given, and hate to be reminded that we should be thankful. So deprived of that topic, he’s reduced to reminding all the guests that life is rottener than we thought.
Civilization’s inevitable demise seems to be Science’s desperate cocktail chatter, lately. When I was growing up, there was only one little way that the world could end. You know. Thermonuclear war. No biggie. Maybe a
little ice age.
Maybe, if the crying native American had anything to say about it, smog might choke out Los Angeles. But that was it.
These days, though, Science wants to remind us almost continuously that there are unknown asteroids out there waiting to smash into us at some unforeseen point in the future. He tickles our fears by reminding us that a massive electromagnetic storm from the sun could wipe out our infrastructures and reduce us to baboons fighting for the last can of Del Monte creamed corn. He paints horrible pictures of global warming gone amok. He tells us our bodies are messy, and that he doesn’t have all the answers about why they go wrong. Then he prompts us to remember that the universe isn’t orderly at all, what with all those black holes
right near our solar system ready to gobble us whole, and if that wasn’t bad enough, why, there’s a particle collider on the other side of the world ready to create one for us, by gosh!
Mr. Apocalypse, once he’s spread his message of doom and gloom, then moves on to the next little cluster of people and comes up with an even more dire scenario to scare them pantless. He really seems to enjoy making a stir.
Oh, Science. The desperation doesn’t suit you. I liked you better in your white lab coat, and wearing those omniscient, horn-rimmed glasses. Please. Don’t let me find out you’ve been bi-polar, all along.
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