What distinguishes a participative science from mainstream science?
Quantum physicist and long-time student of Goethe, Arthur Zajonc, looks at
Goethe's own approach to science for an answer. One key to this approach
is cultivating the investigator's capacities for perception.
Do you think that, with a few moments' thought, you could give a
reasonable description of how the earth and the sky look to someone
standing on the moon? It might not be quite as easy as you think. The
exercise, however, is a good one for anyone who wants to develop an
ability to see things from different points of view.
While one scientist envisions the creation of do-it-yourself kits allowing
hobbyists and even children to manipulate genes and spawn new creatures,
others record the demise of the stable, predictable, "industrial gene"
that is supposed to make such manipulations possible. Meanwhile, a
progress report on The Nature Institute's "nontarget effects of genetic
engineering" project....
One American astronaut, having returned from the moon, asked "how all
those poets and composers came to say so many romantic things" about such
a cold, gray world. German scientist and educator, Martin Wagenschein,
finds the poetic world inseparable from the cold, gray one.
