SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Standing upon the shoulders of giants
Alex Matthews (Year 12) considers the role of science in helping to resolve the conflicts we have faced in the past, and those we might face in the future
S ince the birth of civilization, humanity has always faced conflict. From the earliest humans, who struggled simply to survive, to our modern society, with global warming and overpopulation two of the key issues, no age has been without conflict — and science is one of our greatest allies in finding solutions. Improvements in medicine have enabled us to live for longer, whilst space technology is allowing us to explore the idea of human settlement on Mars and beyond. As a student of Physics, I find that the fact that science is so instrumental in the world we live in inspires me to discover more about its concepts. I was recently reading about young people’s reasons for wishing to study medicine. A common thread was that it allows you to help, and ‘to be respected by others’. This is a significant yet sometimes unacknowledged point: science has the power to bring the world together in harmony. Through the study of medical science, untold human lives have been saved and improved. We have seen an astonishingly significant lengthening of the world’s average life-expectancy, from 31 years in 1900 to just over 71 years in 2014. This has been achieved in part by improvements in medical technology, from anaesthesia in the 1840s to MRI scanners in the 1970s. The advent of computer science and the invention of the Internet have enabled people across the world to communicate and collaborate with ease, simplifying our lives and empowering us to solve many of our daily conflicts. Each new discovery lays down the path for future progress: the development of the computer was dependent on discoveries made many years before, just as research into electromagnetism by physicist James Maxwell laid the foundations for the development of the television, radio and mobile phones that are so commonly used today. This
idea of collaboration and collectivity has been fundamental to human progression ever since civilization began. As Isaac Newton acknowledged: ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.’ As we look into the future, new conflicts arise. How do we prevent global warming and overpopulation? How do we replenish our dwindling resources? We are going to have to innovate: to find new ideas, methods and technology by combining our current scientific knowledge with ideas from other disciplines. Perhaps we do not currently have the knowledge to solve these problems but that’s why it is so important to encourage the uptake of science subjects in the next generation. To combat the increasing number of new problems, we need an increasing number of students in the STEM subjects. There are 7 billion people in the world: 7 billion different personalities who could change the world for the better, engineering new energy resources or developing new space technology to discover planets we can mine or settle on. Progress is like a chemistry experiment: each new discovery combines with others, creating yet more discoveries, which can be further combined in a scientific chain-effect. I’ve discussed our world, a pebble on the beach, but there’s an entire ocean — the universe — that lies beyond it. As time ticks and tocks, we are caught up in our daily lives – waking up, working, sleeping — and sometimes we become oblivious to the mysteries that surround us. Not only can science provide resolution for the primary conflicts in our everyday lives, but it can also help us to start solving the big question: what is life? There are, arguably, two perspectives to our lives. One is the angle our lives are dominated by — the interactions between ourselves, our technologies, other species, and the earth. These interactions are complemented
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