May the Force be with you

It was Star Trek (Wars?) Day earlier this week (May 4th). It usually passes me by, partly because I’m not into sci-fi. The last sci-fi film I watched was The Martian (2015) with Matt Damon playing an astronaut stranded on Mars. I bitched the whole way through it, criticising all the stupid stuff happening because it was scientifically impossible. Mind you, Albert Einstein once said that the likelihood of transforming mass into energy, by bombarding atomic nuclei, was akin to shooting birds at night in a country where there are few birds. The swift-brick Twitterati are traumatised by that thought.

Regardless of any future scientific advances that might prove The Martian right, I prefer Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, even though it was written over 300 years ago. My copy was published in New York in 1945. I have no idea why. Anyhow, to put the early 18th century into perspective, this was shortly after Sir Isaac Newton invented gravity, and Halley’s Comet made the front page of the Guardian for being the product of white, male, corporate colonialists.

Another reason May 4th is not on my radar is because May 5th is when Mum “put on her red shoes and danced the blues” with Dad once more (although neither of them cared much for David Bowie). Four years ago. Wow. Dad’s been gone over 11 years now. Wowzer. He never even got to vote in the Brexit referendum. He’d have voted Leave.

As Mum said while Sis and I sat with her on the sofa waiting for the funeral director to get over from the other side of Milton Keynes and come tend to Dad, “Poor Nigel”; Dad’s name was Richard, or Dick.

“Pardon, Mum?” I ventured timidly.

“Poor Nigel Farage,” she clarified. “He’s just lost a vote.”

Mum and Dad weren’t scientists. They preferred the humanities: English Literature and Music for Dad; Mum excelling at History and Theology. I’m still sorting through their library, the bulk of which I inherited. Fascinating, as Spock would say (and we’re back to May the Fourth). Sis is similarly gifted in English, also Art – I’m not going to mention her Geography or Maths. Bro is also brill at English. In addition, they’re both experts in the sci-fi genre – literature and film.

I always did better at maths and science: all facts, no fiction. Am I adopted? Or maybe just autistic. Then again, I’ve always enjoyed reading (but hated studying) classical English and American literature, can navigate my way through many aspects of economics, got to grips with cultural geography in recent years, trip the light fandango with philosophy – ancient to modern – and feel comfortable with pockets of history. I once disagreed with Dr David Starkey on something historical, which he probably thought was hysterical, but he was very polite. Lovely chap, he is. In addition to his superior intellect, he’s witty and sensitive, although can be acerbic. He was cancelled by silly, thoughtless people many years ago for one silly, thoughtless outburst. He once explained that he has “a tendency towards showmanship... towards self-indulgence and explosion and repartee and occasional silliness and going over the top.” Off with his head! (Dad loved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland).

One might think that it’s safer being on the science and maths side. You can’t argue with 1 + 1 = 2, although it did take Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead 379 pages to prove it. Newtonian Mechanics is also undoubted, providing you don’t want to study anything too small, too large or too fast; then, you have to defer to Einstein (relatively speaking), Heisenberg (of uncertainty fame), or Schrödinger (he with the cat).

Unfortunately, not even science and maths is immune from ‘delusional woke dogma’, and it’s been going on for a while. In 2022, the Quality Assurance Agency began to revise its Subject Benchmark Statements (i.e. general guidance for the design of academic courses) to consider “wider social goals”, which include equality, diversity, and inclusivity. Oxford’s Chancellor, Lord Patten, likened these Statements to “a parody of an article in the Daily Mail”.

The SBS for Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research (MSOR) was published in 2023. Regarding decolonisation, the advice goes like this:

“Though there is no suggestion of omitting or censoring core discipline content, MSOR

subjects are not neutral nor detached from society, and explicit reflection on the history

and practice of MSOR knowledge generation can be useful in attempting to avoid 

unconscious biases in course design and delivery. While presenting the positive 

contributions that MSOR disciplines have made, provision might also reflect the fact that 

such contributions sometimes arose from cultural contexts with issues that would now be 

considered problematic. For example, some early ideas in statistics were motivated by their 

proposers’ support for eugenics, some astronomical data were collected on plantations by 

enslaved people, and, historically, some mathematicians have recorded racist or fascist 

views or connections to groups such as the Nazis. Further, there are historical and ongoing 

issues around power dynamics and gatekeeping in both access to and generation of MSOR 

knowledge.”

Anyone who has studied maths at any level will have benefited from the Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, who practically invented the concept thousands of years ago. Later, Euclidean geometry, the Pythagorean theorem and Archimedes’ principle emanated from Ancient Greece. In India, between 200–700 AD, the place-value system and the concept of zero were formalized, which later influenced global mathematics through Islamic scholars like al-Khwarizmi, who developed algebra. The Islamic Golden Age (800–1200 AD) further advanced trigonometry, algebra, and astronomical calculations. Then calculus was developed by a couple of those pesky white western males (Newton and Leibniz). In other words, maths is a collective human achievement, shaped by countless thinkers across different cultures and eras. Just get on and do the maths and leave the history of it to, well, historians.

As for ‘science’, the QAA breaks it down into various ‘subdisciplines’. Taking Chemistry as an example, they say:

“Chemistry, as a subject whose underpinnings rely upon objective observation, should be culturally and ethically neutral. However, its historical identity and application in wider society must be viewed and taught in an inclusive manner. Curricula should recognise the discoveries and contributions of chemical scientists with diverse backgrounds and identities, and acknowledge that different cultural backgrounds may provide different insights and lead to new discoveries. Furthermore, learners should have the opportunity to explore chemistry-related topics that inspire them and that allow them to situate their knowledge in the light of their aspirations, lived experiences or cultural backgrounds.”

I recently sat next to my old chemistry professor at a Cambridge dinner. He still thinks of me as the naughtiest girl in his class. That’s some accolade, given that I was amongst the first cohort of women admitted to the sporty male college, and we were accepted as much for our ability not to be phased by the persistent odour of testosterone as we were for our recitation of the chemical reactivity mnemonic: Peter’s (not Schrödinger’s) Silly Cat Mauled A Zebra In The Leg However Cats Make Small Grazes). He would have been horrified at the idea of ‘decolonisation’. By focusing on science and not woke stuff, rumour has it he was a scintilla away from winning a Nobel prize for his work on the Ligand Polyhedral Model of Fe3(CO)12. In a nutshell, he theorised that a CO polyhedron surrounds the central iron core, which is consistent with the compound’s observed behaviour and crystallographic studies. He chuckled when he told me that the polyhedral structure came to him while he was presenting a lecture on the elusiveness of the structure. Talk about inspired. It reminded me of another ‘discovery’ – the structure of benzene, a ‘circle’ of six carbon atoms, each with a hydrogen atom attached. The German scientist August Kekulé in 1865 dreamed of a snake biting its own tail, leading him to propose the cyclic benzene structure. Another white, male, western scientist.

By the way, the QAA once put out a ‘corrective’ statement saying they weren’t funded by the taxpayer. Really? They’re actually funded through a number of channels including:
• Membership fees from higher education providers (which are themselves part-funded by the taxpayer to the tune of over £22bn)
• UK funding councils and organisations to which QAA reports annually (which includes the Office for Students, which is funded by the taxpayer)
• Fees and maintenance charges paid by providers of higher education seeking educational oversight for immigration purposes as required by the Home Office.
• Private contracts, consultancy and business development work in the UK and internationally”.

If decolonising the curriculum leads to such crass interpretation of numbers and facts, then higher education providers should cancel their membership. Oxford University did just that. Cambridge University is also not on the list of current members of QAA. However, that hasn’t stopped it sharing almost £250,000 with Stirling University from another quango, to try to decolonise science, geography and maths lessons. According to this week’s GB News (well it makes a change from the Daily Mail), the two-year project will look at stamping out "scientific and environmental racism" in secondary schools. The academics claim that these subjects have "particular colonial entanglements and legacies” resulting in “biases, inequalities and injustice". The money is being so-squandered by the Economic and Social Research Council, a subsidiary of UK Research Innovation, which has a budget of about £123million from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, i.e. the taxpayer.

Sorry, Darlings, but the Periodic Table of the Elements, Peter’s Silly Cat and the mantra ‘Acid + Base = Salt + Water’ work in the Congo the same as they do in Croydon. If you want to teach alchemy, shamanism, or breast-enlargement through hypnotherapy then go ahead, but please don’t claim that’s science, otherwise you'll well and truly need the Force to protect you.