Nobel Laureate Dr. Harold Kroto presentation.
Can the Internet Save the Enlightenment?
Details: January 17, 10 a.m. informal reception & breakout; 11:00 a.m. sharp -- presentation
Marshall Student Center Ballrooms A&B
MAP:
http://msc.usf.edu/directions.htm
Admission is free, parking is $4
Nobel Laureate Dr. Sir Harry Kroto
The Enlightenment is under threat as powerful and well-funded forces wage war on modern values based on doubt, questioning and reasoned analysis. Distortion of the Democratic process is now well under way as fundamentalist attitudes take control of education, the media, the political process, business strategies and the judicial system with the aim of ensuring that liberal Democratic principles will not prevail in the future.
The various regions of the world are under threat by a variety of movements each of which has blind faith in a particular form of fundamentalist dogma either religious or political. The movements are antidemocratic and intrinsically antagonistic as they involve that historically incendiary combination of parochial nationalism with fundamentalist dogma. Throughout all these regions however there exist vast numbers of individuals who share an alternative but common philosophy based on intrinsically humanitarian and humanistic ideals developed by rational discourse. These people have a cross-national, multicultural and globally coherent cultural identity. This community which possesses ethical and moral values based on common sense and pragmatism is dismayed by the way in which fundamentalist attitudes are whittling away the simple freedoms that define "the Enlightenment". This enlightened community is fragmented but united in a common hope - that humanitarian and humanistic values will become the primary guide in making decisions on the plethora of complex socio-political, socio-economic, environmental and technological issues that now threaten our very survival. Worldwide this community may actually be in the majority.
The global reach of the Internet and the possibility of mobilising action on a global scale may offer a ray of hope in withstanding the assault now well under way. Through the Internet one can instantaneously communicate with people worldwide who share this common philosophy. Even though the Internet is already being used effectively by those who wish to undermine the Enlightenment it should be possible to develop an effective strategy for cooperative organised action to reverse the rate of erosion of civil liberties on a global scale - indeed promote truly Global Citizenship. In fact the Internet may actually provide our last hope of saving The Enlightenment from Dark Ages 2000.
The democatic process is being fought against piecemeal by parochial and localised ideologies, however, in individual communities the democratic process no longer appears able to cope with the concerted efforts of a determined army of irrationalists who will use any subterfuge to subvert the democratic process to either seize, retain or increase their hold on power and finances.
NOTES
The rational minority in any one community however shares a common culture with those of all other communities worldwide and Decent people are worried worldwide
Decent religious people whatever their persuasion are now genuinely worried by the way their values are being undermined by fundamentalists who are distorting the genuine humanitarian attitudes that many among them hold. Moderate people despair at the extremism among their ranks and the fundametalist shift that the recent leadership is putting in place.
We live in a pluralistic world in which simplistic rules are a recipe for disaster. SQUARE is an organisation devoted to linking people who care passionately about saving The Enlightenment.
Harold Kroto FRS
Sir Harold Kroto : Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1996, Francis Eppes Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida State University.
Sir Harold (known as Harry) obtained a BSc in Chemistry (1961) and a PhD in Molecular Spectroscopy (1964) at the University of Sheffield. After a post-doctoral position at the National Research Council in Ottawa from 1964 to 1966 he spent a year at the Murray Hill Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and in 1967 he started his academic career at the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K.
By 1970 he had carried out research in the electronic spectroscopy of gas phase free radicals and was moving on to liquid phase Raman studies. By 1974 he had finally obtained a much awaited microwave spectrometer and the first molecule he used it for was the carbon chain species HC5N. Laboratory and radio astronomy studies on long linear carbon chain molecules led to the surprising discovery that they existed in interstellar space and also in stars. Laboratory experiments with co-workers at Rice University, which simulated the chemical reactions in the atmosphere of red giant stars, uncovered the existence of C60 in 1985. C60 is an elegant molecule shaped as a soccer ball and named Buckminsterfullerene to honour the American architect who had conceived the geodesic dome that the molecule, on a microsocopic scale, seems to replicate.
The discovery of C60 caused Kroto to shelve his dream of setting up a studio specialising in scientific graphic design (which he had been doing semi-professionally for years). He therefore decided to probe the consequences of the C60 concept and to exploit the synthetic chemistry and material sciences application. In 1990 hewas elected a Fellow of The Royal Society and in 1991 he has awarded a Royal Society Research Professorship which enabled him to concentrate on research. From 1990 - 1998 he was chairman of the editorial board of the Chemical Society Reviews. In 1995, he inaugurated the Vega Science Trust ( http://www.vega.org.uk/ ) to create science films of sufficient high quality for network television broadcast. The following year he was knighted for his contributions to chemistry and awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry together with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley.
From 2002-4 he was President of the Royal Society of Chemistry and from 2004 he has been on the Scripps Institute Board of Scientific Governors.
In 2007 he started a new educational initiative at Florida State University known as GEOSET - Global Eduaction Outreach in Science, Engineering and Technology - http://www.geoset.info/
He has received honorary degrees from a number of universities in the UK and abroad, as well as many scientific awards including the International Prize for New Materials by the American Physical Society (1992), the Italgas Prize for Innovation in Chemistry (1992), the Royal Society of Chemistry Longstaff Medal (1993), the Faraday Award (2001), the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (2002) and the Kavli Lectureship of the Materials Research Society (2007). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007.
