20120217_R3
Source: BBC Radio 3: Essential Classics
URL: N/A
Date: 17/02/2012
Event: Steve Jones: global warming is "99.9% likely to be happening and due to human activity"
Credit: BBC Radio 3
People:
- Rob Cowan: Music broadcaster and writer
- Professor Steve Jones: Geneticist and science writer
Rob Cowan: But now, my guest on Essential Classics this week, he's joined me, he's Professor of Genetics at University College London - Steve Jones. Steve, welcome to the programme.
Steve Jones: Hello.
Rob Cowan: Now, I suppose it's the question to ask - sorry if 10:30 in the morning's a bit early. Are religion and science compatible?
Steve Jones: Crikey, that is a bit early. I have to say, in all frankness, I think no. There's a great, I think familiar, phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing". But what's much worse is certainty. And that's the problem with religion that sets it aside absolutely from science. Science is the art of the uncertain. Um, every scientist expects his or her theory to collapse. And if it does collapse, that's good news, not bad. That happened in physics, for example, in 1905.
Religion isn't like that. "I know that my redeemer liveth" - it's not that my redeemer might live. And so, to me, it's a completely static pastime. And I don't really see how any scientist can be religious, for that reason.
Rob Cowan: Okay. Well, let me ask you this. Given that Bach's St Matthew Passion and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis are both wisely considered to be towering masterpieces, I wonder: would they have been possible, if their creators had lacked faith?
Steve Jones: Oh, probably not. I mean, I think that's probably true, but I think that's not relevant to the issue of science and religion. You know, people get their inspiration from different things, I mean, as you could talk about Keats and poetry, and the joy of nature. Keats would not have written as he had, had he not been a wonderful observer of the world of nature. But that really isn't a problem - you know, I'm a - I'm somebody who makes nature tedious, I'm a scientist - I go out and I "unweave the rainbow", as Keats put it, when he was talking against science. So, I think science, in a sense, stands alone as something different from everything else.
Rob Cowan: And the Beethoven and the Bach aren't marvellous payoffs?
Steve Jones: They're absolutely marvellous things. I mean, you know, I love choral music, I love a lot of sacred music, and I - but I see it as music, not as a kind of excuse for living the way I live.
Rob Cowan: Okay, well look, now besides your post at University College London, you also have visiting posts at Harvard University and in universities and colleges in Chicago, California, Bostwana, Sierra Leone and Adelaide, Australia. So, with all that travelling, there must be a piece that reminds you of a particular place...
* * *
Rob Cowan: Now, Steve Jones, last year you drew attention to what you saw as the raw deal that science gets in the media, especially on the BBC. You said that the corporation had failed to "make a distinction" - and here I quote - "between well-established fact" - in other words, science - "and opinion". And in doing so, the corporation had give free publicity to marginal belief. Now, there you're talking about creationists, anti-climate change groups and so on. Do you feel anything has changed, recently?
Steve Jones: Well, it's not so long since I wrote that report for the BBC Trust, about six months or less. So I think - yes, I think is the answer. Um, it's a problem, it really shows you how science stands apart, because if you're on, say, the Today programme - the Today programme is of course very concerned with balance, as it ought to be. And if you have a politician from one party, we'll balance him with a politician from another party.
But science isn't like that. Large quantities of science are accepted. I often think that the advance of science is a bit like the tide coming in. If you look at the rocks on the shore, there's foam, there's disagreement, there's spume flying around, there's lots of noise. But then you look beyond, and you've got clear blue water. There's no real disagreement.
And it's just pathetic, to me, to constantly go back, that if you're talking about global warming, which is 99.9% likely to be happening and due to human activity, there is this sort of nervous tic, that they have to have the 0.1% attitude, that it's not happening, that it's all made up by corrupt scientists. It isn't, and if it is made up by corrupt scientists, the first people to show that would be other scientists.
The media doesn't have a problem with science, it has a problem with the culture of science - that's the great difficulty, I think. I found, and other people have pointed out, when looking at the media treatment of science in general, the scientists are a culture, we all think in a particular way. We don't think "I hate that guy, therefore his theories must be wrong" - well, maybe we do think that - I sometimes think that - but if his theory turns out to be right, I have to accept it. And politics isn't like that.
Rob Cowan: So we have to separate the two, it's very important.
Steve Jones: Well, we have to treat them in different ways, I think.