Perspectives of Outer Space
Outer space is such a vast area with so many unknowns and new things to be discovered. For this reason, it has been a popular topic within the science community for years. No matter how much we study outer space and how many new things we discover out there, we will never completely understand it and its contents. For many scientists, the study of outer space becomes a key part in their lives, they become so invested with their research and become very emotional about the work they are doing. David Kirby and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein are two scientists who are very invested in their work with the universe and everything beyond it.
Dr. Prescod Weinstein writes a moving piece relating the stars and the night sky to searching for freedom and the struggles that she has had as an African American woman in science. She discusses her experiences as a black woman growing up in LA and how she fought to make sure that she would get the future she wanted so badly, and she did. She talks about how her family was not particularly wealthy as she was growing up and how this affected her time in school and her experiences as a child. She also discusses the connection of the night sky to Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad and how these people relied on the stars to navigate themselves to freedom. She writes, “I do not believe we can talk about the wonders of the night sky without talking about the fact that people are running for their lives beneath the same celestial structures that I get paid to think about every day,” (Prescod- Weinstein). She believes that there is such as strong power of the night sky and the fact that there are so many people looking at these same stars, yet, everyone lives such different lives and has so many different struggles. Prescod-Weinstein just wants to make sure that all humans have the same opportunities and rights to freedom, as well as the knowledge of the stars and the night sky.
On the other hand, David Kirby discusses in his article how so much of science is focused on the wonder aspect of it all. This wonder aspect is what keeps both the scientists as well as the common public interested in the topics. People are naturally curious beings and they want to be able to understand how things work, and science is the only way to answer so many of these questions. What Kirby focuses on with this aspect of wonder is how this relates to religion and how these ideas of scientific findings and religion can contradict one another when attempting to explain a “wonder”. Religion often uses the explanation of how the Earth and everything on it is God’s creation and that we should just accept it at that because there is no explanation to why things are the way they are. But when science finds a reason behind things that used to be unknow, this can create conflict within people of whether to believe their religious explanation or the scientific one. He explains how religious ideas can cause contradicting thoughts regarding science, “In reality, many recent science documentaries portray the religious sense of wonder as an ineffectual means by which to approach nature,” (Kirby). But Kirby also explains the importance of people keeping a check on what they believe. Focusing too much on wonder and believing everything that scientists tell you could be dangerous. Scientists are humans too and they are flawed and make mistakes, therefor not everything that we think to be factual is necessarily true. We need to keep these thoughts in check when looking at what information is presented to us and look at all perspectives we are given.
There are many different ways to look at science and to understand it, we just need to understand that everyone has a different experiences and therefore different perspectives on it. Understanding the different perspectives of scientists is important for scientific exploration and findings and the more angles we can view something from, the more information we have at our disposal.
Kirby, D. (2015, January 25). Evangelizing the Cosmos: Science Documentaries and the Dangers of Wonder Overload. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from http://thescienceandentertainmentlab.com/evangelizing-the-cosmos/
Prescod-Weinstein, C. (2019, March 23). The right to know and understand the night sky. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://medium.com/@chanda/the-right-to-know-and-understand-the-night-sky-3a9fb4e04d92
