The Emperor Has No Clothes by Tema Okun

Author:Tema Okun [no setting]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: no setting
Publisher: IAP - Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

The Emperor Has No Clothes 79

explains that because the prevalent theories of the time, based on a New- tonian model, did not allow for the phenomena of meteorites, scientists instead created elaborate alternate explanations--"delusionary `visions,' stones heated from being struck by lightening, stones borne aloft by whirlwinds or volcanic eruptions" (p. 58). The power of the Academy to frame contemporary thinking at the time was such that they discarded most of the stones (the scientific evidence) because no theory could incor- porate their reality.

Activist and biologist Kriti Sharma makes the point that "the questions we ask or deem as important are so profoundly influenced by culture" (personal correspondence, July 17, 2009). She references nineteenth cen- tury immunologist Ludwik Fleck, who "when considering what scientific questions were being asked in his time" would in his turn ask "what social anxiety is finding its relief in research?" (personal correspondence, July 17, 2009).

Our culture is replete with stories of those in power "finding relief in research," constructing reality in complete contravention of the evidence. In the mid-1800s, "conventional wisdom denied that white men were impregnating the black women they owned" in spite of the many children offering physical evidence of these forced unions (Washington, 2006, p. 97). Prominent scientists focused their energies on proving that "mulat- toes were too frail, feeble, and infertile to reproduce their own kind," to provide the rationale for laws prohibiting intermarriage in a (vain) attempt to stop the possibilities of "Negroes ... born white [who] would gain the capability to pass" (pp. 97-98). For a more contemporary exam- ple, Al Gore, in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, documents how the media has systematically distorted the overwhelming scientific consensus about catastrophic global warming under pressure from political forces that would prefer wholesale delusion about the state of the environment (Bender & Guggenheim, 2006).

Educator and theorist Henry Giroux suggests we are required to understand "how ideology works on and through individuals to secure their consent to the basic ethos and practices of the dominant culture" while at the same time understanding "how ideology creates the terrain for self-reflection and transformative action" (2001, p. 145). In the words of Paolo Freire (1998, p. 26), we should understand ourselves "to be condi- tioned but not determined." Korten echoes this idea, noting that because culture is a "human construct subject to intentional choice" (2006, p. 75), we have the "capacity to choose our future" (p. 76).

In fact, we can point to people and communities who have strived and continue to do just that. For one example, Maxine Greene (1988) refer- ences the French Resistance, who during WWII,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.