12 APRIL 2023 SCIENTISTS

Science is a subject that most of us were required to study when we were in school. It is a broad subject; however, and when I was in school I did not care much for it. This is because the areas of science that my teachers focused on simply did not interest me. I found learning about electricity, or astronomy, or the table of elements, or chemistry, to be gruesomely boring. My classes in biology bring to mind having to dissect frogs and to endure the stench of formaldehyde that permeated the entire building. Having grown in awareness since my school days, the murder of all those frogs would now entice me to launch a protest.

There are two kinds of scientists in the world. Most scientists (and indeed, most people) view the natural world as separate from themselves. These scientists seek to use the knowledge that they gain to control the world around them.They see no harm in mutilating other living things and in devising experiments to torture them and to exploit them for their own selfish reasons. Chemists create drugs in laboratories and test them on animals, oblivious to the imprisonment of them and the pain inflicted on them, emotionally as well as physically. They allay any sense of morality by (falsely) claiming that other animals have no feelings. These “laboratory” animals are viewed as “lesser” beings whose lives can be sacrificed for the good of human ”kind.” Plants, too, are constantly being changed and genetically modified from their original forms in order that they can be “improved” for human use. Scientists have interfered so much in our natural world that it is no longer recognizable as it was 200, or more, years ago.

A smaller number of scientists approach their work as a means to better understand individual species and their relationship to each other. They study other species, forests, the ocean, and the numerous ecosystems within our world to discover the ways in which they relate to one another. They seek to understand how these species and ecosystems together maintain harmony and balance; and they look for ways in which humans, who are a part of Nature, can also live in harmony with the natural world.

One of my final science classes that I recall from high school was when we were asked to study a small ecosystem for an entire semester. Our successful completion of the project would be our final grade for that semester. I remember receiving an “A” for my project. I believe it planted a seed that has guided me in my life, to seek to know and to understand the non-human life that is all around me. I am not a scientist, but I rely on some scientists’ discoveries to help me be a good steward of all the plant and animal life for which I have been given the privilege of caring for.