Okay, I will confess that while it has been years since we’ve had a TV in our house, I have always been a fan of “The Big Bang Theory.” Sure, it had some leftist overtones, but I found it funny and a nice break from the regimen of news I had to consume as a talk show host. I still watch the reruns if we are stuck in a hotel room or flying. I particularly enjoyed Sheldon Cooper.
As originally portrayed, Sheldon viewed the world the same way he viewed physics: there were certain realities and constants, and part of the character’s charm was he could not square that worldview with what was going on around him. The character could be childish and petty, but there was a no-BS, everyman quality to him. The are certainties and realities that govern science, and Sheldon felt that should be true for the rest of life as well.
I’ve always been interested in physics, biology, and astronomy. Lamentably, I lack the intellect to make a living in those disciplines, but I enjoy them in part because they are blessedly free of the screeds, emotion, virtue signaling, and manipulation that have always been part and parcel of the Left but enjoy enhanced prominence these days. Of course, in 21st-century America, where DEI turns everything it touches into… well, something that is not gold. Even the sciences are not safe.
The Washington Free Beacon recently outlined a bit of a controversy over at the Department of Energy. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a cosmologist and a professor of physics and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Through a Biden appointee, she is in the top slot of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel at the Department of Energy. The panel advises the department on funding and research priorities for particle physics and has an impact on the use of federal money.
Her position of prominence has some scientists concerned about ethical issues and about the potential for the panel to find itself in the crosshairs of Trump’s anti-DEI crusade. From the Free Beacon:
She first raised eyebrows in 2020 when she argued that a culture of “white empiricism”—in which “only white people” are deemed capable of objectivity—”undermines a significant theory of twentieth-century physics: General Relativity.”
Einstein’s theory is rooted in the “idea that there is no single objective frame of reference that is more objective than any other,” Prescod-Weinstein wrote in Signs, a gender studies journal published by the University of Chicago. “Yet the number of women in physics remains low, especially those of African descent … Given that Black women must, according to Einstein’s principle … have an equal claim to objectivity regardless of their simultaneously experiencing intersecting axes of oppression, we can dispense with any suggestion that the low number of Black women in science indicates any lack of validity on their part as observers.”
Prescod-Weinstein has also opined that string theory failed to succeed because there were too many white men in the field of physics. She was also one of the ones who cried that James Webb (the one for whom the telescope was named) had purged the ranks of NASA of gay people. She stuck by her claim even after the agency itself debunked the rumor.
In the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, Prescod-Weinstein became a vocal advocate for the anti-Israel movement. In 2019, she told the Jewish magazine Forward in a roundtable discussion, “White Jews may not live at the center of the tent of whiteness, but they are still white. When white Jews refuse to acknowledge that they benefit from and participate in white supremacy, they are wasting time that could otherwise be spent upending that white supremacy.”
Sergiu Klainerman, a mathematician at Princeton University who studies the theory of general relativity, noted that Prescod-Weinstein’s “scientific accomplishments seem modest and her racialist and sexist view of science, combined with her uniquely destructive activism, ought to be disqualifying. It seems to me incredible that she has a voice on important decisions concerning the DOE physics division.” A geophysicist at the University of Chicago commented that the panel needed to remain apolitical and choose grants and personnel based on merit.
Some credit Galileo with saying, “The Bible tells me how to go to heaven but not how the heavens go.” And learning how the heavens go is immensely important. The same can be said for understanding biology, chemistry, and physics. The beauty of those disciplines is that their study mandates that we set aside personal prejudices, grudges, and agendas to see the realities that make up the universe and us. Whether we are marveling at the process involved with adenosine triphosphate, studying the movements and natures of the planets and stars, or unlocking the forces that bind the universe together, we are able to slip the surly bonds of ego and comprehend wonders.
While some scientists may be atheist or agnostic, for a believer, this research can serve to demonstrate the sheer wonder and complexity of creation. Such accomplishments, whether held to be secular or sacred, cannot be achieved if science is dragged into the gutter.
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