By Paul Wessel

Physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson made a powerful plea for the power of science in a Facebook post last week. In a passionate video, he laid out how science has made us great:

• One of the great things about science is that it is an entire exercise in finding what is true.
• The hypothesis, you test it.
• I get a result.
• A rival of mine double checks it because they think I might be wrong.
• They perform an even better experiment than I did and they find out, “Hey—this experiment matches.”
• “Oh my gosh! We’re onto something here. “
• And out of this rises a new emergent truth.
• It does it better than anything else we have ever come up with as human beings.

Check out the four-minute video here.

“Recognize what science is and allow it to be what it can and should be in the service of civilization.” Sounds like a plan. Are you in?

Paul Wessel is director of market development at the U.S. Green Building Council.