Charles Darwin’s Legacy

It’s the birthday of Charles Darwin, whose discovery of biological evolution ranks in the top couple of moments in human history when a longstanding paradigm was turned on its head.

Thus perhaps it’s a good moment to speculate: which one’s next to go?  The problem, of course, is that’s a completely unanswerable question, by the very definition of the term “paradigm.”  In many ways they are searchlights that serve to focus our research onto areas that seem most promising, yet in other ways they are blinders, actively prohibiting us from seeing anything else. 

In any case, here are a few that we’d all like to see:

• Relegating war to the annals of history as the way human conflicts are resolved

• An approach to harnessing even a tiny fraction of the enormous power of the universe into useful energy here at home

• A workable approach to geo-engineering that is safe and free from unintended consequences

Here’s wishing humankind well in the search for the next great breakthrough.  I only wish I could be more than just a cheerleader.