OVERVIEW
WW II, followed as it was by the US Cold War with the Soviet Union, injected science and engineering into tight alliances with the federal government, research universities, and industrial corporations. The massive outlay of funding and project personnel to produce working atomic weapons changed the course of history, both in terms of putting scientists on a perpetual war footing in terms of funding and research emphases over the next generation, and bringing debates about the moral responsibilities of scientists into direct public view. The startling theoretical advances of atomic physics broke open new avenues of investigation about matter and time and space, and the momentous practical applications meant that the larger public was drafted into accounting for how the unprecedented power of science was affecting people's present-day circumstances and future prospects. Primary school children participated in "duck-and-cover" drills meant to "save" them from being in the cross-hairs of nuclear explosion while their parents became nervous about radioactive fallout contaminating such basic foodstuffs as milk. Debates over the social responsibilities of scientists vs. the sanctity of the research lab was one avenue of discussion; how to reform the US educational system to identify young people with scientific talent was another.

In the Post World War II era, rising concern with the environmental ramifications of such phenomena as global industrialization, rapid population growth, the spread of the nuclear arms race, severe air and water pollution, and decreases in biodiversity due to species extinction contributed to the emergence of “environmentalism,” a widespread effort to assess and remediate damage to the planet. By the 1970s environmental advocacy and debates intensified, transforming politics, consumer behavior, international relations – debates that remain immediately relevant to the present day. One of the greatest needs in assessing environmental trajectories was scientific data, and the scientific enterprise lagged behind public engagement on these issues, as environmental questions had never been given the kind of attention devoted to other pathways, such as the study of the atom and of the cell. While atomic and cellular science were of course relevant to asking and answering questions about life on Earth, grappling with the complexity of factors that marked the study of the environment meant that adequate treatments would require new thinking about how to pursue scientific knowledge of complex, evolving, and multidimensional ecosystems – approaches that would need to be different than had marked the rise of laboratory science, in terms of methods, theories, and relationship to the public.

LIST OF READINGS AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Reading Assignments:

Finish Halden, Environment

Watch the following background videos:

Inside Einstein’s Mind [53 min]
Uranium: Twisting the Dragon’s Tale [episode 1, 1 hr]
Crash Course History of Science #33: “The Atomic Bomb” [12 min]
Watch this video from the time period: Duck and Cover [1951 / 10 min]
Crash Course Ecology #10: "5 Human Impacts on the Environment " [12 min]
Earth Days [PBS, 2 hours]
When Rivers Caught Fire: A Brief History of Earth Day [a collection of sources and short videos; KQED 2018 by Matthew Green]
The Early Sixties: American Science [a web exhibit]

Assignments:

Connection Box Discussion #5 from Chapters 11-12
Pocket Archive #3 on Sputnik and the News Media

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