Look how far we’ve come; look how far we have to go
I love to remind people that the space between the first powered flight to the original moon landing was less than 66 years.
The Wright Brothers flew from a sand dune in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on Dec. 17, 1903. Man first stepped on the moon on July 20,1969.
Obviously, that is easily within a human life span.
Anyone familiar with the environmental movement has heard of Rachel Carson and her 1962 book Silent Spring. She was lauded as a scientist whose lyrical writing style grabbed readers’ attention.
But that wasn’t her first book. It was her fourth. In the 1940s and 50s, Carson wrote a trilogy about the ocean with The Sea Around Us becoming a best seller.
I decided to check that one out recently. The version I picked up was a reprinting from 1991, but was based on a second edition from 1961 that included footnotes of things Carson saw change in the 10 years since it was first published. That was enlightening for me as a writer and a reader.
But what was most astounding in it was just how much of the science in the book was flat out wrong. It would be another 20 years before plate tectonics became accepted science so her explanations of how continents connected were way off. Or the then-theory on how the moon was formed by spinning out of the Pacific Ocean sea floor. They never did come up with a good reason for what would cause earth to spin so fast that a chunk of the crust would fly into space and form the moon.
This is not a criticism of Carson at all. Her writing style is indeed captivating. It is more of a statement on the pace at which science moves and our need to be flexible as the latest discoveries crop up.
It wasn’t that long ago that most people thought of the ocean as being so enormous that human actions couldn’t affect it, overfishing was impossible and commercial fishermen thought quotas and limits were just government interference. Until their fisheries collapsed.
For that matter, Silent Spring wasn’t immediately lauded as a breakthrough, either. She pointed out that DDT was killing the birds, but the chemical industry fought back hard and attempted to discredit her.
It all speaks to the scientific process and the fact that very little is considered “settled.” We continually learn and improve our understanding of the world.
I have to admit, though, that I put The Sea Around Us down about halfway through it. I just couldn’t do it. I kept expecting to learn things and my brain kept shouting “That’s not right!”
Last week, I had the chance to interview the hosts of the NPR podcast Short Wave. (My day job is the news director for an NPR member station.) Regina Barber and Emily Kwong host the science show helping people understand “science.” They are in the middle of an eight week look at the oceans in what they are calling Sea Camp.
“Did you know we know even less about the sea than we know about outer space? Dive into the mysterious depths of the ocean with Short Wave's Sea Camp series that explores the beauty and complexity lurking below — and how it all connects back to life on land.”
It was a fun interview that will air Monday. I’ll share the link then.
But one thing that stuck out to me during the interview, as a water guy, was I think they are learning quite a bit in the process themselves and are developing a greater understanding of how everything is connected. I look forward to following the series.
It’ll be interesting to see how our knowledge of the ocean has changed in the next 75 years.
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