For public responsibility for spaceship earth

pp. 397-403

in: Joseph Agassi, Science and culture, Berlin, Springer, 2003

Abstract

The present global political situation is serious. It desperately invites public awareness and concern. Local solutions to global problems are of no use except when they can raise public awareness sufficiently to expand and become global. Public awareness should raise a mass-movement that may stimulate. The first thing that it should stimulate is more research. This requires that the leaders of the movement should acknowledge our ignorance of operationally feasible solutions. The movement has to seek a comprehensive view through public critical discussions and efficient means for the dissemination of minimal scientific literacy. The movement must be educational and democratic and it must encourage individual autonomy. It should develop ideas in a combination of imaginative propaganda and proper research. Philosophy can contribute significantly to this by assisting the rise of a comprehensive view. Academic research should attend to practical problems. This already happens to some extent, but in a manner that is not sufficiently comprehensive. The key is grassroots education that should enable participants in it to compel appropriate institutions to discuss global problems and enact legislation towards their global solutions.