Original mission statement: Science, People and Politics

Aims: Science, People & Politics, 2nd July, 2006

Putting pen to paper is a dangerous occupation. We capture only the moment's thought. Within minutes those words can seem false, inaccurate, a reflection of meditative transient thinking which, because committed to paper, takes on the guise of having been logically, thoughtfully and reflectively constructed. Pen on paper can create us to ourselves and others as we are - and - as we are not. Even speaking can take us to a place which a few moments later we do not wish to be.

How then do we dare to write or speak; how do we find that which is the kernel, the stern unchanging fibre of our being? Perhaps in our instincts and in our response to the instantaneous moment.

Yet mind and body can be disturbed by passing or chronic illness, by environment or harm caused by the willful exposure of the self by others to danger, prejudice, presupposition. How would Primo Levi have written, spoken and died had he lived his life in safety? Did he live, die and write as he did only because his privacy, his safety and his being were threatened?
What if he had lived today?
What if instead of being literally driven to experience the horrors that he did, he had been driven to the brink of madness because chemicals, fear, loss, psychology, isolation wrought by prejudice, ridicule, misunderstanding or even by modern technology herded him to a place he did not know had existed?
In such circumstance would he have sustained his humanity?

Mission statement

The aim of Science, People and Politics is to explore, with reference to Science, Technology, the Arts and Humanities, how science, people and politics impact on one another in today's world in different local settings, nationally and internationally. To question the economic realities and the balance of good and bad in all settings, to question how access to knowledge can free the human spirit and further the human instinct to good, but also to examine how envy, and the instinct to control and secrecy can undermine that which was meant to be good and constructive. And, finally, the publication's aim is to explore the potential for synergy or misunderstanding that exists at the cusp of interdisciplinarity.

Copyright Helen Gavaghan