In my lifetime, I've been very pleased
to see one trend in society taking shape, and that is the increasing
popularity of science with the general public. The increasing
exposure that scientific endeavors now receive in the media may not
reach all audiences just yet, but is certainly reaching a broader
audience than in the past. As a result, the public is becoming more
aware of the good that science can do (and has done) in their
lives, and this can only be for the good. It used to be that when you
talked about science to anyone other than a scientist, you would
either get blank stares or open hostility. When I grew up, the smart
people (adults too, not just children) actually tried to hide the
fact, whereas now, looking “slow on the uptake” is the ultimate
deal-breaker, be it in a job interview or on a date. The schoolyard
mentality that science is only for geeks is melting away, as the
value of science becomes increasingly, glaringly apparently to
an increasingly technological and information-driven society. Gone
are the days where the majority of people could make a decent living
without the benefit of a higher education, and as an increasing
majority of society pursues higher education, geek is becoming the
new chic. As someone who has been a geek virtually since conception,
I can't quite convey how much I'm loving this development.
The thing is, science isn't just about
cool new gadgets, or advancements in health care. It is to a point,
and certainly provides many of these attractive fringe benefits, but
underlying it all, science is about expanding our understanding of
our own reality. We all want, on some level, to understand why we're
here, to place our existence in a larger context, and science does
this with more eloquence than any other system we have ever come up
with as a species. Carl Sagan put it best: “Science is more than
just a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking, a way of rationally
interrogating the world.” Although we live in a “middle world”,
too large to perceive atoms and too small to perceive the structure
of the galaxy, we have through the rational process of science
managed to unlock many of the secrets nature has stored away at these
mind-boggling scales. We have determined the most basic components of
what we are made of (we believe) and now understand our place in the
larger universe in much more intricate detail than would have ever
been possible without looking through the illuminating lens of
science. People are coming to understand this, and are increasingly
being drawn into this amazing, ongoing narrative as it unfolds. Our
quest to understand the universe is, when you think about it, the
universe's way of knowing itself, and a life spent in the
pursuit of such understanding can only be a life well spent. In the
past, people often turned to religion when asking themselves the
question “Why are we here?”, but recently, this thirst for
understanding and the never-ending quest to expand that drives science it is providing a
much more satisfactory purpose for increasing millions worldwide. I
believe it no coincidence that this wave of reason and rationalism
coincides with the massive decrease in worldwide violence, both at
the individual and national levels, that the past few decades have
seen.
If current trends continue, science
will change our lives even more dramatically in the coming decades
than it has in the past. Technology and research are not just
cumulative, but amplify each other, with advances in materials
science, for example, spurring leaps forward in computer technology,
renewables, and a number of other fields. As such, our technological
progress as a species is increasing at an exponential rate, and that
being said, we had better be prepared. Only by utilizing science for
the unique tool that it is, and fostering a deep general
understanding of it among the public, can we hope to successfully
ride out this unprecedented transition. It's been said that our
species faces a bottleneck very shortly, as our population reaches
the limits of what the Earth can naturally provide for. If this is
the case, as I believe the evidence indicates it to be, then the only
way we can avoid a great deal of suffering is to find and implement
innovative solutions via science. Every day, amazing new innovations
and technologies are announced that can help us to make the
transition into a more humane, prosperous and self-sustaining
society, but only through legislation can they be widely and quickly
implemented, and this is contingent on a well-educated public
creating the political pressure to do so. This is the most
fundamental reason for every one of us to keep informed – we need
to be, in order to ensure our democracies function well, and remain in
step with the times. We should not delude ourselves about the fact
that societies can collapse, and in the past, it has been the ones
that refused to adapt that have most often met this fate. The
countries of the world, now deeply entangled by the internet,
economic ties and global travel, are forming a fledgeling global
civilization, but in the face of the grotesque environmental damage
we are inflicting in the process, it should be obvious that we are
not immune to potential catastrophe. Without wisely implementing
policies to mitigate this damage, and mitigate the threat from other
dangers, we are simply tempting fate.
On a brighter note, the amount of
human potential that science stands to unlock this century is
incredibly inspiring. In a recent blog post, I made several
predictions about how science and technology will likely enhance our
lives in coming decades, and these were perhaps conservative. New and
completely innovative ideas emerge all the time in science, often
completely by accident, and by properly funding new research and
development, we increase our odds of such happy and beneficial
discoveries. In brief, this decade is likely to see the end of
cancer, the dramatic expansion of the human lifespan, the eradication
of extreme poverty, and the beginnings of our colonization of the
solar system, all thanks to science. Such accomplishments should make
us all proud of what we can accomplish as a species, and inspire us
to continue pushing at the limits of our knowledge. The beginning of
wisdom, it is said, is to understand that you know nothing, and I
would argue that the next step to wisdom is refusing to accept this
as the status quo.
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