Since the mid-1970s, David Suzuki has been in the public eye for his environmental activism through his many television and radio series, books, and documentaries. He hosts and narrates the popular and long-running CBC program The Nature of Things, and the David Suzuki Foundation has been a longtime advocate for environmental policy, clean energy, and sustainability. In 1984, Suzuki spoke to the Empire Club of Canada about the importance of science and the role it plays in shaping Canada’s future. “Science, when applied by industry, medicine and the military, is by far the most explosive force that influences our lives today, and yet to look at the media you would get no impression that this was the case,” he said.
David Suzuki. Credit: David Suzuki Foundation https://davidsuzuki.org
He continued, speaking on Canada’s manufacturing and technology capabilities, pointing out how, despite many people in Canada seeing themselves as being in a technologically advanced country, most of our goods are not made here. “We are not an industrialized or a highly technologically advanced country at all,” he said. “We are a Third World country. We are a country that basically lives by selling its raw resources and buying our technology back, and to think that we belong in the category with the European nations or with the United States, I think is simply fooling ourselves.” He says that despite the fact that science affects all of our lives, a shockingly low number of people consider it that way. After learning about the sciences in the school system, a small number of people go on to specialize in the field full-time, and the rest forget about most of the things they’ve learned as soon as they can. Suzuki sees these as examples of Canadians having a fundamental failure to perceive reality.
Suzuki says that this is why he is so active on T.V. and radio, and that he believes the media to be an important tool to give science education to the masses. He believes that in the 20th century, scientists have replaced religious leaders as the ultimate authority on truth in the world. Despite this important role that scientists play, he sees many people as being naïve about science and the role it plays in their lives, which is why widespread science education is so important. “Science is not in fact in the business of finding absolute truth,” Suzuki said. What science does is try to explain the disparate number of facts or observations, try to put these into some meaningful framework or context, within which you can carry out further experiments.” He says that the great strength of science is that it is not in the business of finding absolute truth.
Suzuki uses the example of Charles Darwin, who lived in a time when slavery was still common around the world, colonialism and imperialism were rampant, and white supremacy was commonly accepted. It was under this social context that Darwin made his great discovery and put forward the theory of evolution. “Darwin’s interpretation of his theory was set within a framework that he solved through his own cultural biases,” he said. “He saw nature and its evolution as read in tooth and claw. He saw evolution as a constant struggle, as a battle for survival, and the dominance of the superior individual or the survivor.” From a different perspective, it can be said that animals evolve through mutualism and cooperation, with complex ecosystems all working together. But in Darwin’s time, the “survival of the fittest” framework fit in neatly with pre-existing cultural attitudes during his time.
Suzuki further emphasized the importance of science education and knowledge of basic scientific facts and practices in the mainstream. He says that as society has become more technologically advanced, the vast majority of research is either motivated by profit or for military purposes. “When a discovery is made, someone is going to find a way to make a new weapon or to make a million bucks on it,” he said. “Now that means that the public rarely has access to new discoveries before that discovery is applied.” He points out that politicians typically come from law or business backgrounds, two professions that Suzuki says are “rock bottom” in scientific knowledge. “Now these are people who are going to make decisions
that will affect society long after they are gone, that will affect us into the twenty-first century,” he said. “They are going to have to make decisions about the future of Canada’s medical care, about the future of satellite communications, about our forests, about our fisheries, about pollution, about the impact of computers in the workplace, about whether to go for fusion vs. fission, about our Candu reactor – all of these are issues that require a considerable understanding of science and technology.”
Written by Silas Le Blanc. Silas Le Blanc is a Toronto based journalist, writer and content creator. She has previously worked at Xtra Magazine, The Varsity, The Review of Journalism and CJRU 1280 AM.