Nicholas Barnard Science and Human Values 1/5/99
When posed with the question: What have I gotten out of this course? It is often easiest to babble on about the actual things that we have read from the Lahdahs, to the fruition of scientific revolutions, to the way in which we have come to think about our current world due to the age old research that has permeated our societies. But that isn't really true. This course has cemented a concept that started within my workplace, McDonald's. While most people only see the orchestrated mess of a fast food restaurant a good deal of psychology is at work, on the customers, the crew people and the managers. As a Crew trainer I learned the best way to insure that someone remembers something correctly is to tell them why we do it “The McDonald's Way.” The small problem with this approach is that in many cases the reasoning behind the procedures we perform are unknown. I have been able to personally come up with descent “Whys” just by thinking about what we do.
The word “Why” is the beginning of many intellectual pursuits. I truly believe that trying to understand the historical motivations of Thomas Kuhn, Kepler and many others have assisted myself in my every day life by imbedding the question “Why do they think that way?” into my verbal interpreting part of my brain. I have begun to explore personally the roots of what I think. I find a great deal of my thoughts are extrapolated from the people I come into contact, especially the virtual on screen characters. I recently finished a book on Gene Roddenberry. I've realized how he used his communication through Star Trek to influence how people see this world. By posing questions within his television show he forces me to evaluate why I think the way I do, and if it is fair to think the way I do for the others around me. I have asked myself, “Is my nutty humor counterproductive?” I would tend to say no but I asked myself why I performed these nutty humorous acts, and I came up with the reasoning that I use this humor as a rebellion against the rigidities of society that have been imposed by the policies and conventions of predecessors that were instituted to serve their purposes, not mine. I constantly explore to myself why I do what I do and how small discoveries and decisions made by my predecessors affect me today.