Science and democracy

by Ilse Genovese

It’s rare for an anniversary to stir so much review and commentary but we’ve just witnessed one, and give it a big splash ourselves in this issue of the ACSM Bulletin. You guessed it....Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, two giants born on either side of the Atlantic two hundred years ago, on February 12th.
There has never been a time when Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not take a more concrete form than during the inauguration of America’s first African American president on January 20th, 2009. Throughout history, each generation has evoked a different man. Yet, despite a legacy that has shifted again and again with contention and revisionism, one thing is sure. “Lincoln will always be the president who preserved the Union by helping to destroy slavery,” writes Philip B. Kunhardt III in his article ‘Lincoln’s Contested Legacy” in the Smithsonian.’ “With stubborness, caution and an exquisite sense of timing, he engaged almost physically with unfolding history. Derided by some as an opportunist, he was in fact an artist, responding to events as he himself changed over time, allowing himself to grow into a true reformer.”
The continued interest in Abraham Lincoln within our community is easy to discern. He practised surveying before becoming a lawyer and one of America’s best examples of democratic leadership. Many among us believe that working closely with the “people of the land” opened his eyes to the potential and problems of the land.
Such an obvious connection cannot be made for Charles Darwin. Why write about the evolution of species in a magazine concerned with issues geospatial? The fact is, the connection is there, even if it not immediately obvious. Animals don’t live in cyberspace; they are part of an ecosystem broadly described as “land.” Vegetation cover, and the plant species that make a particular canopy, are of interest to surveyors and mappers; new applications have or are being developed to extract land and vegetation types from satellite remote sensing. And there is another connection—with geology.
As a writer and editor, I could not but notice the manner in which Lincoln and Darwin have managed to ensure that their legacies live for posterity. They were masters of a language that I would describe as “compelling” and natural. The kind of language that makes one think, “that’s right.” In Kunhardt’s words, “Darwin and Lincoln helped remake our language and forge a new kind of rhetoric that we still respond to in politics and popular science alike.”
Darwin and Lincoln are not the only icons in this issue of the ACSM Bulletin. The article on “Objective Measurement” is about Thomas Jefferson and his ideas about the role of science and education in public policy. My article was inspired by an account in the December 2008 issue of The Old Dominion Surveyor and leans toward capturing the immense impact an exceptional idea, pursued by an exceptional scientist and thinker, can have on the evolution of a nation.
The first lead article in this issue is, however, about an icon in our community. David B. Zilkoski, to many of us “Dave,” retired as Director of the National Geodetic Survey at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in early January. Before joining his family in North Carolina, Dave talked to the ACSM Bulletin about 34 years of service during which he has helped geodesy “position itself as the foundation for all geodetic positioning.” It’s entirely coincidental that a man who championed the establishment of our Nation’s oldest scientific organization and a man who actually worked for that organization have contributed to this first issue of the ACSM Bulletin in 2009.