Biology Teachers and Peace

Abstract

Eleven years ago (1970) ABTpublished an article of mine entitled Is There a Doctor on the Planet? I said then that humanity, if the whole of it were viewed as an individual, would be diagnosed insane by the criteria psychologists use. Weapons that would necessarily be both suicidal and homicidal are more than possessed; they are aimed and ready to fire. I contended that our species needed heroic therapy and asserted that of biology seem to have been selected, partly by default, to carry out much of the treatment. My article was deficient in its lack of a prescription for the patient. My notion of the remedy was tentative then; it is now a firm conviction. Biology teachers are uniquely situated to turn mankind away from the madness of nuclear armament and toward peaceful cooperation. Their textbooks, laboratories, and field studies buttress with solid fact Albert Schweitzer's concept of the will to live and its philosophically inescapable corollary: the ethical principle of Reverence for Life (Schweitzer 1958). Humans share with trees, fungi, finches, and goldfish the basic molecules of life, including nucleic acids, which differ only in detail between forms. Unity is inescapable on this molecular level, but it is equally apparent in the ubiquitousness of life-preserving physiological and anatomical devices, diverse though these may be among species. The exquisite immune response in humans, the reproductive exuberance of sea urchins, the camouflage of moths, the specialized structure of bird beaks, phototropism in plants; the list of tactics employed in what Darwin called the universal struggle for life is endless (Darwin 1859). Teachers of biology need take only a short step when they guide youngsters beyond observation of these unifying phenomena to the reverence they deserve: