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THE BIG QUESTION

What Is Special About Science and Technology?

By Gary Wood
    By Gary Wood     The human spirit rejoices with freedomÑour souls seem to know it is essential to the fulfillment of our lives. Americans have come to consider freedom a basic right; but, as in the past, our citizens dying in an international struggle to protect our liberty. In historical terms, individual freedom is still a relatively new idea. To me, it is the key to Americas success. Here I will try to explain why I feel freedom is such a powerful force.
    As I have stated before, I consider gaining knowledge as one of the three basic purposes of life, the other two being survival and reproduction. I have also pointed out that human beings are successful because we are the species that has mastered the art of gaining knowledge. Now I contend that Americans are the most successful humans because our freedom to exchange diverse ideas produces the best new ideas and therefore gains the most useful knowledge.
    I find there are two basic types of knowledge: genetic knowledge and ideas. Genetic knowledge is the knowledge held in the DNA of plants and animals. Ideas collectively represent the knowledge held in minds and in symbols understood by minds. I like to break our ideas into three types of human knowledge: experience, reasoning, and accumulated knowledge. But for this discussion, I will just write about genetic knowledge which accumulates in the gene pools of different species, and ideas which accumulates in the totality of human culture.
    To explain my position, I need to go into a little biology and draw an analogy between the evolution of species and the evolution of ideas. For a species to successfully evolve in response to changing environments, they need a fairly large gene pool. Gene diversity gives the species different genetic solutions to possible changing circumstances. Accordingly when geologic change comes and species need to adapt, a large diverse species with a lot of regional diversity has a better chance of surviving change than a small population with a very limited gene pool.
    To me, the same is true with ideas. A group of humans that have a wide variety of experience and education, which means they have the most exposure to diverse ideas, has the best chance of coming up with new solutions to arising problems. Free societies, like ours, allow a free exchange of ideas. It is Americans melting pot and freedom together that produces the great creative force that results in our successful and expanding technology. In a free society, the people are free to explore every possibility of life and in so doing produce newer more powerful concepts.
    Less free societies allow fewer "officially sanctioned" ideas to be discussed, and force limited ideas from the top of the power structure down to the people with less power. When ever a society limits it citizens freedoms there are by nature fewer diverse ideas that are discussed and experimented with. Those limited societies have less chance of coming up with the creative solutions to new problems. Since America is the freest society, we are also the most creative. And since gaining new knowledge is a basic goal of life, our free creative society is the most successful.
    Genetic evolution works with the building blocks of genetic mutations within individuals and closely related clans. Working within their gene pool (which is the total different mutations an individual or group has), plants and animals compete with others of their kind for limited resources.
    This struggle for the survival of the fittest is really a contest to come up with the best set of successful genes (the best genetic knowledge). Ideas compete in the same sort of way. Individuals and groups with the best ideas become more successful and their ideas become more dominant in the process. But I will have more about this in next monthÕs article when I write about: Competition and Capitalism.