Science, Politics, People

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Science, People & Politics, Volume 2, Final corrected posting 2.1.07.

The past, present and future of Science, People & Politics

by Helen Gavaghan

HOME | INDEXES | ISSUE 1 (2007) CONTENTS

In hindsight there is a compelling inevitability about events linking the Big Bang to the existence of macromolecules in the living organism. But had a disembodied extra Universal intelligence living outside of time existed before energy exploded and clumped into fundamental particles, would prebiotic molecules have been anticipated? Would it have been considered inevitable that the molecules of life, as we in existence now know life, would form?

Hard to see how such a prediction could have been made. Unless the intelligence knew the rules of physics as they have come to be understood in our Universe now and will be understood in an unknown future. Unless by living outside of time, the intelligence encompassed all time and all knowledge, and perhaps called itself God.

Such an intelligence - if only out of loneliness - might have hoped that atoms might become something more promisingly interactive, such as a biological macromolecules. From that state the lonely God might have seen a chance that self-conscious intelligent life would emerge.

It is very unlikely that science, product of self-conscious intelligent life, would have made such a prediction or even allowed itself the hope. But then science is not God, and scientists, Robert Oppenheimer not withstanding, are not gods. As Stephen J. Gould argued in It's a Wonderful Life, the existence of intelligent life is improbable.

Gould's argument is that humanity is not the summit of perfection and God's creation, but rather that it is an insignificant twig in the evolutionary tree of life. With hindsight, science can explain many of the steps that led to the existence of these insignificant twigs (people), but in advance their inevitability could not have been known. The same holds true for Science, People & Politics. As other avenues and the avenues planned for my creative life were blasted out of existence this publication became the vehicle for work - both mine and that of others who do not fit wholly into existing niches - intended to link the sciences to arts via the humanities.

As a life long adherent of science, but not a scientist, it seemed to me that science might have an additional chance of being heard if it took itself slightly away from centre stage.

That is what Volume One of the title tried to do. Science is not excluded - and stories of science have been invited for Volume Two - it is simply that the publication seeks to make science part of a creative whole. My contributors are self selecting, though in the case of Arie Issar I made a particular effort to lure him to write of the science of his subject as an intellectual bedrock and to overlay economics and politics on that bedrock.

Volume Two, opened by the essay by Fae Korsmo from the US National Science Foundation and published on New Year's day, intends to patiently consolidate this start and invites those unafraid of the brickbats that writing will bring their way to submit essays for publication.

Though I face some personal challenges this coming year as I attempt to undo the consequences of the damage done to my life by actions, inaction and the silent betrayal of myself, and the repulsiveness of most of the past three years of my life, the publication itself, which I have founded, is now secure.

As the New Year starts I would like to thank my editorial advisory board, in particular my two colleagues from science writing, for adding their names to mine as I attempted to create something positive from the consequences of events in the spring of 2004, a destruction compounded by actions in the summer of that year.

I would particularly like to thank Fred Pearce and Martin Redfern who, as personal friends and former colleagues, have stood by me even though they could not and may not even now believe what I have told them of the criminal action against myself in 2004 and the Medical and Police abuse of my humanity and citizenship and their continuing dehumanising and dangerous denial of the hurt done to me. Luckily none of any of this has anything to do with my past journalism and editing, which tends to be of the on-the-record, can-name-my-sources variety (to my editors, if not always in print). So once I emerge from these challenges and as I go through these challenges the Title can continue.

I remain interested in publishing essays and reviews such as those by Matt Firth, Paula Cleggett, Gil Dekel and Arie Issar. In other words by authors as diverse as a local arts centre manager - Matt Firth - to a researcher of international renown - Arie Issar - who has survived political and academic criticisms for five decades.

His is a work that UNESCO would have liked to publish at a conference in Africa last June. As editor and founder of Science, People & Politics I am proud that Issar's work was the first externally submitted piece that the title published, and so his work is in significant part responsible for the British Library awarding an International Standard Serial Number to the title.

Fred Pearce, one of my advisory board and a deeply respected former colleague, also knows of and has alluded to Issar's work in the book of Fred's which I reviewed last year. I first encountered Professor Issar's work in the mid 1980s when I interviewed him for New Scientist about the water under The Negev.

Between Firth and Issar one finds Paula Cleggett, a professional public relations manager now striving for a foothold in academia and bravely exposing herself to criticism in her first personally assertive piece of writing about government and governance.

Similarly with Gil Dekel, a first year doctoral student whose academic supervisor agreed that Science, People & Politics was a suitable place for him to publish the first fruits of his academic musings. Gil also pushed me to think deeply about the essence of the meaning and intent of Copyright, intellectual property, authors', editors' and publishers' rights in the present and in future. When the future is unknown that is not easy to accomplish. My conclusions about this can be found on this website by clicking on the icon for authors' contracts located below the masthead.^{My thinking and exchanges with others have led me to conclude that
copyright ownership is decided in exchange with the publisher, and need not require copyright to passed to the publisher if one is ensuring Royalties for a negotiated period.}

If Science, People & Politics lives long enough I suppose the robustness or otherwise of its original agreements might be tested. I hope that the testing between publisher and author will never require more than discussion of what the author's intention is in the context of what has been agreed. Life is too short for needless battles, but Science, People & Politics will never view defending the rights of its authors as a needless battle.

There is danger for authors moving into interdisciplinary waters. Mainly because there are so many adjoining fields from which criticism can flow. But once the critic relaxes and reads past the words, that across borders raise ire, it ought to be possible to see what the author is striving to accomplish.

Dekel, for example, is looking for the essence of creativity as it is experienced by a poet, and Dekel draws on his understanding of the way that physicists have perceived reality through the ages as his means of reaching beyond the literary world to explore poetic creativity. His quest is not dissimilar to the actors who Firth reviews and who, with backing in part from the Institute of Physics, use drama to reach for a non scientists' understanding of the creativity of physicists.

Is there an ethical root to the creative process - the creation of knowledge - and how is knowledge defined? When, for example, did carbon become a prebiotic molecule with all that the knowledge of hindsight confers on the word prebiotic as well as being simply carbon?

The meaning that Dekel assigns to the word knowledge is 'attitude change'. Given that meaning one must ask what factors led to the original attitude, what factors change the attitude and what factors shape the final attitude? Such questions are not idle thoughts to while away a few hours of unfilled time. They matter crucially in any enterprise that makes decisions about a human life on the basis of the attitudes of those tasked with deciding.

From my own experience I have experienced the creation of knowledge that comes from attitude change in circumstances as diverse as the jury room and the laboratory. In the former I was deeply impressed by the care that fellow citizens brought to their efforts to understand and be fair. We had a deep awareness that the loss of a human being's liberty was at stake. In the latter my graphs tended to have error bars way outside the appropriate norm. Did these two experiences lead to the production of knowledge? Despite having done my best I do not know. What knowledge emerges from the poetic process or from an accelerator or from a jury room?

Oddly, my non conformist graphs did not dent my belief in the accuracy of the relationship in normal circumstances among temperature, pressure and volume. Perhaps it is that once grasped it is such an intuitively satisfying relationship that one feels no desire to challenge its validity. By contrast relativity and quantum dynamics were conceptually always deeply problematic for me. But they are phenomena outside the norm of daily life, and as such there are no easy metaphors to reach for and no first hand knowledge to bring common sense to bear on understanding them.

I would think my problems with relativity arose because I could not relate the mathematical vocabulary I was then being taught to the physical observations over time, nor did the concept of curved space make any sense to me, but that might have been a failing of the applied mathematical language.

Issar, Dekel and the actors Firth reviews are each seeking in their own way to reach for a reality. In Issar's case life and death and the fate of nations are at stake. Not everything that Science, People & Politics will publish this coming year will be so crucial, but all will strive to say something to raise the spirit and reach across boarders.

Science, from the Big Bang to the conscious intelligent life we call people, exercising their creativity in political arenas, is what this new publication is about.

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Lightly edited for clarity by Helen Gavaghan on 26/7/2020.

23.12.2021. I stand by the words concerning the abuse of myself by British medics and police.

I recall the four years of hell (2004-2008), they put me through.

When the nightmare which destroyed my life began, I was a 25-year veteran journalist, editor, and author working nationally and internationally, and I was a part time post graduate research student at the University of Manchester, making a career change (foiled) because of the changes in my industry.

After I published the item above, matters became worse.

I recall the fear as I tried to get police to hear what I had by law to tell them, given the words of my head of department, and of a solicitor. I recall their dismissiveness. I recall the arrogance of medics as I asked them polite questions. I recall the medical abuse of the MHAct, the lies in their medical notes. I recall how my freedom was abusively taken with no explanation – and I allege unlawfully. I recall my disgust at the inept medical notes I, by law, extracted from medics. There are no words to explain their incompetence, their lies, their laziness, nor the manner in which medics abused the MHAct to hide their abusiveness. I recall the door kicked in by police, even as I was trying to ascertain who they were. They did not answer, and even as I was opening the door, it was kicked in. I had to leap backwards, which is not easy if one of your legs drags slightly. I recall being hauled in handcuffs across the car park in front of all my neighbours. I recall driving desperately to find a jurisdiction which would let me tell them what by law I must tell them. I recall eventually the even more fearful words from a police inspector, and what was from him subsequently abusive behaviour. When I tried to talk to WYP professional standards, Police arrested me. There was no way I could work until these matters were resolved, and the bankruptcy I petitioned for became inevitable. Then came the false accusations, the charges, being dragged through Court, and solicitors who were way too arrogant to listen to what they needed to hear if they were to defend me. I recall the nurse pinching my wrist and bruising it because I had had the temerity to ask to be allowed to sleep through the night. I recall the four abusive thugs who assaulted me as I lay peacefully and blamelessly on my bed. I recall the terror of forced medication when I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt I had not one of the symptoms the medication was supposed to alleviate, and that the medication was anyway contraindicated for me. I recall the years afterwards of eating dried vegetable stew mix with boiling water and curling in a ball of fear and tears under my desk, knowing everything I had worked for in my life was gone, all I dreamed of and aspired to was gone, that my family was shattered, and that to stay alive I had to overturn worthless medical notes of arrogance and mindless disgusting abuse. I remember it all. Every single swelling heartbeat, every atrial fibrillation. And I do not have the words to make clear how life destroying and needless was every single thing which happened, because the police and medics I dealt with were steeped in their own self-importance. Their lies and prejudice constructed a mental illness which did not and does not exist. Yet without the money to pay solicitors, who anyway assume they know it all when they do not, one cannot hold the abusers to account. Their power base for abuse is the MHAct, which allows abuse of all, and it must be ripped from them. Not having a mental illness – as I did not and do not – cannot save you from the abuse possible under its terms. I recall my acquittal, but that does not compensate for loosing all one had worked for, and those who perpetrated the abuse should not be allowed to walk away.

I am an experienced professional journalist and a full member of the Chartered Institute of Journalist, and I have written the above in that capacity, and published the work as a publisher.

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