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From February 14 to February 19, Boston was the science capital of the United States, hosting the Annual Meeting and Science Innovation Exposition of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Thousands of scientists from the U.S., and not a few from abroad, converged to present papers, conduct job interviews, network with friends, and carry on all the activities typical of such professional gatherings.

But of course the annual meeting of the AAAS is not just another conference. Science is the dominant discourse of our culture, and its products—technology high and low—define this historical moment and arouse both great hopes and great fears for the century to come. The range of subjects covered is staggering. On the morning of Friday the 15th between 9:00 a.m. and noon, you could choose among sessions on avian cognition ("When Being Called 'Bird Brain' Is a Compliment"), predicting extreme weather, accuracy in media reporting of scientific issues, the archaeology of modern human origins, the farm crisis, the new computing, the future of personal use vehicles in China, and half a dozen more, including the excellent session I attended, "The Prefrontal Cortex and Cognition: New Insights into Willful Behavior."

From this immense variety you get a sense of the extraordinary enterprise that is modern science: an enormous collective effort, always building on the work of predecessors, crossing barriers of language and culture. Not content with ever greater understanding and control of the physical world, its reach extends far into the human social world as well.

Indeed, in his keynote address, Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and president of the AAAS, presented science as nothing less than the solution to the world's most vexing problems. The theme of this year's meeting,"Science in a Connected World," was given new urgency by the events of September 11. While scientists must work immediately to help to combat terrorism, Raven said, their long-term goal must be to eliminate the inequities that (in his view) gave rise to terrorism in the first place. What he called for was nothing less than a utopian dream of complete global equality—in health and material comforts, in educational opportunities, in democratic representation, and in every other way.

This agenda was interwoven with the other key theme of his address: the ongoing degradation of the environment, the loss of biodiversity, the galloping consumption of resources by the developed nations (and by Americans in particular)—all of that, said once, said twice, and said again, in case you had dozed off at some point.

Hunter-gatherer modes, evolved to cope with demands that were pressing millennia ago, still dominate our thinking even though they are no longer functional, Raven said. Our urgent need is to develop new ways of thinking. After all, humans are but one of perhaps 10 million species, yet we persist in regarding ourselves as special, consuming resources out of all proportion to our place in the grand scheme of things.

In his exposition of this theme, Raven grew apoplectic, especially when referring to the controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which argues that many of the concerns of environmentalists are overstated or supported by dubious evidence. Raven's sputtering fury at the very thought of such heresy seemed a poor model for scientific engagement, especially given the fact that the author of this contrarian book, Bjorn Lonborg, is by no means indifferent to many of Raven's concerns.

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February (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46