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The Limits of Science
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10625 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
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2 / 1986 |
4,671 Words |
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Eugene P. Wigner
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The present discussion is not put forward with the usual pride of the scientist who feels that he can make an addition, however small, to a problem which has aroused his and his colleagues' interest. Rather, it is a speculation of a kind which all of us feel a great reluctance to undertake: much like the speculation on the ultimate fate of somebody who is very dear to us. It is a speculation on the future of science itself, whether it will share, at some very distant future, the fate of "Alles was entsteht ist wert dass es zu Grunde geht." (All that exists is worthy of passing away.) Naturally, in such a speculation one wishes to assume the best of conditions for one's subject and disregard the danger of an accident that may befall it, however real that danger may be.
The Growth of Science
The most remarkable thing about Science is its youth. The earliest beginning of chemistry, as we now know it, certainly does not antedate Boyle's Sceptical Chemist, which appeared in 1661. More probably, one would place the birthyear of chemistry around the years of activity of Lavoisier, between 1770 and 1790, or count its years from Dalton's law in 1808. Physics is somewhat older; Newton's Principia, a rather finished work, became available in 1687. Archimedes discovered laws of physics around 250 B.C., but his discoveries hardly can be called the real beginning of physics. On the whole, one is probably safe in saying that Science is less than 300 years old. This number has to be compared with the age of Man, which is certainly greater than 100,000 years.
The number of people who devote years of their life to the acquisition of knowledge had an equally spectacular rise. Thus, about ten percent of the American youth are graduated from college, a percentage that has lately doubled in every twenty years. Harvard College was founded in 1636 and it was certainly not a scientific college at that time. The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one hundred years old and had originally 461 members. Today, it has more than half a million and its membership increased by almost 10,000 in a single half year. The growth of college attendance was less spectacular in some other countries, probably more spectacular in Russia.
Man's increased mastery of the Earth can be directly traced to his increased knowledge of the laws of nature. The surface of the Earth, as a whole, was not affected by man for 99,700 years but vast areas have been deforested of the surface's store of some minerals depleted since the birth of science.
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