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Bibliotheca Alexandrina Newsletter Issue No CONTENTS Bibliotheca Alexandrina Newsletter Issue No. 14, July 2012 Published by the Media Department Director, Bibliotheca Alexandrina EDITORIAL 2 General Supervisor Linking Science to Society Ismail Serageldin Editor-in-Chief BA HIGHLIGHTS 8 Khaled Azab Advances in New Life Sciences at BioVision Alexandria 2012 Managing Editor Sarah Elhaddad The Bibliotheca Alexandrina Memory of Modern Egypt Exhibition in Lithuania Contributing Writers Access to Knowledge: An International Nagla El Arabawy Common Good to Convey Maha Abbas The BA Planetarium Science Center: Ten Years of Science Proofreading Rana Eldeeb CONTRIBUTIONS 24 Perihan Fahmy Observatories in Islamic History Photographs Translation and Conflict Media Department Nanoarchitecture and Global Warming Graphic Designer WORDS TO REMEMBER 32 Amal Ezzat © Bibliotheca Alexandrina 2012 Information in this Newsletter has been produced with the intent that it be readily available for personal and public non- commercial use and may be reproduced, in part or in whole and by any means, without charge or further permission from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, with due credit to the source. Contributions do not represent the editorial views of the Library of Alexandria. Kindly send your feedback, and contributions to [email protected] Bibliotheca Alexandrina P.O. Box 138, Chatby 21526, Alexandria, Egypt Phone: + (203) 4839999; Ext: 2237 E-mail: [email protected] 4 Editorial Linking Science to Society * Ismail Serageldin These approaches to thinking are very different from the simple embrace of technology. They require a certain set of values that I refer to as the “Values of Science”: truth, honor, imagination, a constructive subversiveness, engagement with the contrarian view and the settlement of disputes by rationality and evidence. The scientific method, from Ibn al-Haytham to Bacon, Descartes and Galileo, is an empirical one of observation, hypothesis, experiment and interpretation. Indeed, this method is a refinement on Along with Bronowski, I define science as that of the scientists of the old age, from “the organization of our knowledge in such Thales on to right here in the Ancient Library a way that it commands more of the hidden of Alexandria. It was here that Aristarchus potential in nature”. In that definition, it is made the hypothesis that the Earth revolves clear that it goes far beyond the utilitarian around the Sun, for the first time in history, application of knowledge. It impacts an in the third century BCE. It was here that entire world outlook; from cosmology to Ptolemy provided his model of a geocentric being. Perhaps that is why scientists used to be cosmology. That model ruled the world, referred to as “Natural Philosophers”. After all, despite the mathematical questioning of the Newton’s master work was the Philosophiae Muslim astronomers and mathematicians, Naturalis Principia Mathematica. until Copernicus revolutionized the world * This article is an edited version of the speech delivered by Dr. Serageldin at the closing session of the BioVision Alexandria Conference 2012. 5 with his own heliocentric cosmology. It took The Two Cultures Revisited a long time for the refinements of Keppler When C.P. Snow wrote about “the and Newton’s Principia to win the day for the two cultures” over half a century ago, he cause that Galileo almost gave up his life for. bemoaned a degree of ignorance, and That is how science advances. even a rising enmity between the culture of science and the culture of the humanities. The ignorance of each about the other was noticeable then and has grown since. Today, that non-science culture has mutated into a variety of groups, all sharing the same level of ignorance about the basics of science. Some are gravitating towards a fundamentally anti- science posture. Many deny that science is anything more than just another discourse reflecting the power relationships of society, and that its practitioners, the scientists, are no more than another social group vying for resources and power. They politicize debate and reject evidence. Yet Science is different. However, we lose sight of that difference at our own peril. In The Ancient Library of Alexandria science, there is no individual authority, no book that governs right or wrong and no high The Quest of Science priests that interpret the sacred texts. Instead, We know that our knowledge is there is a method which is based on rationality fragmentary, susceptible to be changed, and evidence. Science encourages the almost certain to be changed tomorrow. engagement with the contrarian view, and For that is how science advances, by hails the overthrow of existing paradigms overthrowing the existing paradigm. and conceptions as breakthroughs. Moreover, today, the unexplored areas keep However, as powerful as the empirical growing. Indeed, the more answers we find, scientific method is, it is not enough to deal the more questions we raise. The unexplored with many of our problems, which are not areas are indeed enormously vast. just individual or systemic, but also social and Science today is a quest where environmental, local and global. We need achievements are measured not in terms of to bridge the two cultures more than ever the finality of answers, but the fertility of the before. questions they raise. As our world becomes The methods of the mainstream social ever more complex, and our abilities become sciences may differ from those of the natural ever more powerful; we need more than the sciences, but their scholarship is not in doubt. powerful arsenal of the natural sciences, the Usually more qualitative than quantitative, tools of mathematics and the acumen of the the social sciences tend to description rather computing and information sciences. We will than prescription, and avoid generalizations need the wisdom of the humanities, and the across societies, with the obvious exceptions insights of the social sciences. We need to of cross-sectional economic studies. bring the social and natural sciences closer together in both theory and practice. 6 The concern with quantification in social in his Consilience, we can aspire to reject the science is not new, from Laplace (1749- growing chasm between the two cultures 1874) to Quetelet (1796-1874), who invented and promote pluri-disciplinary work. the notion of the “Average Man”, to Walter At present, many of the problems of our Isard (1919-2010), there has been a current time, from gender to medical issues, from the of quantification and bringing mathematical deployment of technology to environment rigor to the social sciences. Mathematical and from social cohesion to international theories in the social sciences are few and peace, focus attention on human individuals there is a certain distaste for projection, and societies as much as on the natural world prediction and forecasting, and many we live in. Human beings are social beings; important insights are obtained by qualitative living things that have motives, intentions, observation and perceptive interpretation. norms and values, whose social institutions The social sciences apply different methods have meaning, symbols, rituals and cultures. than the natural sciences to collect different All of that is not directly measurable, but forms of knowledge that enable the has to be inferred from observations. These development of insights. Thus, if we cannot are precisely the contributions of the social aspire to be moving to a unity of knowledge scientists. For the benefit of humanity in this as suggested by some, most notably E.O. Wilson new century, we must bridge the rift between the two cultures. We must be able to bring together their different and complementary insights in order to bear on the great problems of our time. A Framework for Linking Science to Society We are living in the dawn of the Age of Biology. The new revolutionary transformations in our understanding and our capabilities are opening vistas and raising challenges as never before. It will bring many marvels in production that do not consume or pollute at anything like the levels of the past. However, it will also bring about a speedy and accelerating change in the global marketplace, and the future will belong to the educated, the nimble and the powerful. To those “learning nations” that have the capacity to acquire, process and use knowledge most swiftly and are then in a position to start becoming the producers of knowledge themselves. However, that is not easy. It requires accessing fast-changing knowledge, and the capacity to be fully integrated into the networks of knowledge in the world. Biodiversity, @oilpalm-biodiversity.info 7 The issues are becoming more complex definition in economic terms, public goods in our times. For the first time, the new (non-excludable and non-rival) will require technologies and the new breakthroughs public investment and should be undertaken in science are enabling us to fathom in the name of the public interest. These the very composition of matter, to tinker are important considerations in the time of with the building blocks of life. We are Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and private communicating by thought, even nervous sector led science and technology. Those system to nervous system, we are creating who speak exclusively of market forces forget robots with unprecedented levels of that Adam Smith himself, who formulated the autonomy, we are sending probes to concept of “the invisible hand”, said: other planets, and impacting our own “…[the state is responsible for] … climate, with potentially disastrous effects. erecting and maintaining those public A huge explosion in humanity’s presence institutions and those public works, on the planet has meant that we have which though they may be in the appropriated ever more of the habitats of highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such other species, with important reductions in a nature, that the profit could never biodiversity. The pollution that our agricultural repay the expense to any individual and industrial processes engender is testing or small number of individuals, and the limits of nature’s ability to recycle them.
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