OPINION: Stewards of fire

In the second century A.D., the Christian theologian Tertullian asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” A pointed question at the time, he was concerned with how Greek philosophy might influence budding Christian philosophy and was deeply opposed to their mixing. Why should Christians seek Greek wisdom when they had the Church and its teachings? 

Nearly two millennia later, many Enlightenment philosophers tossed around the same question retorting that the age of reason was being hindered by the teachings and dogma of the Church. Today, on our own campus, I propose we ask ourselves, what does Gottwald have to do with Jepson? Or more aptly, in light of a liberal arts education, what role ought the humanities, leadership, and philosophy play in a science-centered education? 

I grew up attending a K-12 school where topics like history and rhetoric held an outsized influence on our curriculum. When I arrived at Richmond, I knew I wanted to pursue a pre-med track and eagerly enrolled as a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major. My professors were stellar and nothing less than enthusiastic about their respective topics, but, as the weeks and months passed by, I realized that the familiar sound of debate and discussion I was accustomed to in high school had suddenly given way to a rhythmic hum of pencils and styluses scurrying across papers and iPads. 

I began to miss how new topics were springboards for ideas and debates about ethics and politics. Moreover, I began to realize an atrophy of my own public speaking and debating abilities. Like sports or music, every muscle needs to be routinely exercised to be effective — even Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas of the brain. 

I should pause here and state what science faculty are probably thinking at this point. What is there to debate about in core science classes? I can’t possibly be proposing that students should raise objections to whether Lewis acids really are electron acceptors or whether voltage really equals current times resistance. 

How could a science course get through any meaningful amount of material if the class broke into a heated discussion at the advent of every new topic? What student would have enough background knowledge and courage to openly disagree with the underlying mechanics of meiosis? 

Let me put those fears to rest and state that that is not the issue I am raising here. Surely, after paying nearly $240,000 over the course of four years, anyone seeking to walk across a stage and raise a science degree should, without hesitation, be able to explain why trans fats disrupt cellular membranes or how the Clausius-Clapeyron explains water’s lower boiling point in Denver compared to Richmond. 

Having shadowed doctors for several years now, I’ve come to find that the questions families ask physicians, as their loved ones lie at death’s door, have little to do with topics discussed in a traditional STEM education. When faced with the prospect of a brain-dead family member needing a ventilator, a discussion revolving around the soul’s attachment to the body might be more comforting than whether or not brain cells have ceased to convert one glucose monomer into 30 ATP molecules. 

While every Richmond student, even when enrolled in the sciences, is required to take an FYS alongside an English and History gen-ed, those in Gottwald are uniquely positioned to ask and answer some of the most cutting-edge ethical questions conceived in science. When does life start? Should parents use gene editing to ‘enhance’ their children? How far should physicists research nuclear technology, knowing its potentially deadly applications? 

These are questions unlikely to appear on exams but are nonetheless being asked from inside small examination rooms all the way to the halls of Congress. Some teachers might prefer to stay away from such ambiguous questions and instead stick to the concrete and fundamental, but, as we all know, science is about tackling the unknown. Who is better positioned to answer those dilemmas than the students studying them at a microscopic level? We must strive for a better balance between the textbook and the practical. 

Beyond considering this in the context of liberal arts, a better integration of the two disciplines will improve job readiness. We routinely lament the way doctors and scientists speak over their audiences; however, perhaps it’s not entirely their fault. When the majority of what you learn over 4 to 8 years is intellectually challenging language, it should be no surprise that one’s vocabulary gets lost on the non-STEM individual. Perhaps this pattern has had no more of a damaging effect than on the current state of science in this country. 

A poll conducted by Ipsos found that 34% of Americans distrusted the CDC in 2024, and this number has risen to 46% 8 months later. When nearly half of Americans mistrust “the science” it would be unfair to lay the blame solely at the feet of scientists, politicians or the doubting public for this predicament. But, without a doubt, the steady chorus of scientists repeating the refrain “But studies show…” has done little, and quite possibly been counterproductive, to regaining the public trust. The audience of a scientist, and of the undergraduate biology or physics major, is not confined to those reading peer-reviewed journals but encompasses three hundred and fifty million people. The value of knowing how to field and answer the non-scientist’s questions should be held in equally high esteem.  

The ancient Greeks tell us that Prometheus stole fire from the gods and delivered it to humanity. From this, we cultivated the arts, the sciences, and our capacity for intellect. For this, Prometheus was punished for eternity. Before we jump to dismiss this out of hand as a mere etiological myth, as the ancient Greeks had no appreciation for the billions of cortical neurons synapsing in their heads, nor for their disproportionately large cortex-to-body-size ratio, we should rather pause and ask ourselves: have we been good stewards of that fire?

Contact contributor Lucas Chuidian at lucas.chuidian@richmond.edu