Will We Survive Long Enough To Enjoy the Fruits of Science?
According to the Writer’s Almanac:
Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced the discovery of other galaxies beyond the Milky Way on this date in 1924. Before he made his discovery, everyone thought that our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy in the universe, and that there wasn’t much outside it besides the Magellanic Clouds, which are visible by the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere, and which were thought to be clouds of gas or dust. We know now that the Magellanic Clouds are really dwarf galaxies.
With older or smaller telescopes, nebulae just looked like clouds of glowing gas, but with the new Hooker telescope – the most powerful telescope in the world at that time – Hubble was able to see that there were actually stars within the nebula. …. Hubble did the math and realized, to his amazement, that the star he was observing was almost 900,000 light years away (later recalculated at 2 million). That’s more than eight times the distance of the farthest star in the Milky Way. It was then that he realized that the cloud of gas he’d been observing was really another vast galaxy that was very far away. He renamed the Andromeda Nebula the “Andromeda galaxy,” (pictured above with modern technology) and he went on to discover 23 more separate galaxies. Within a few years of Hubble’s discovery, most astronomers came to agree that our galaxy is just one of millions.
This, of course, is just one of the countless epiphanies that science has brought us over the years. In addition to its own importance in astronomy, it serves as a reminder that our understanding of ourselves and the universe is never static, but constantly improving.
Looked at another way, all our civilization really needs to do in order to enjoy the fruits that science will inevitably bring us is simply not to ruin itself. This may sound like a piece of cake, but sometimes looks can be deceiving. It means coming together as a species (something for which there is zero precedent in human history) and putting a lid on the destructive elements that have the potential to take us down hard: environmental decay, nuclear war, world fascism, etc.
If you take a moment and think about these three challenges, you will realize that we’re headed in the wrong direction on each one. Yet the situation is certainly not hopeless.
Which way the day? We have the say.
Craig,
Doom, doom, doom I tells you ! Down to the abyss, to ruin and the apocalypse !.
Hmmm,….. what’s happened that’s so catastrophic ?
Hmm,….In reality, not very much ! The political tide which ebbs and flows has seen voters turn against your chosen political party’s policies (probably disliking being called ignoramuses :).
Catastrophe ? Not really, unless you are that species of environmentalist who resembles a water melon, a fashionable green veneer, but red all the way through.
The day’s of doctrinaire public spending and mandates are drawing to a close. New technology will have to justify it’s effectiveness to receive support. That’s not a bad thing, in fact it can be seen a pruning process, a process of rationalization where new focus can be given to the best new technologies.
It’s also a time for the environmental movement to liberate itself from the thrall of leftist ideologues.
Reading the news from back home in Australia, it would appear the Australian Green Party is self destructing as the hard left faction makes a bid to oust the moderates.
This wouldn’t be so bad if it was an internal squabble over environmental policies, but the rebel factions dissatisfaction is based on the dissolving the green’s founding principle of no factions, and a demand that the parties focus should shift to such policies as the “abolition of capitalism”, “abolition of private schools” ” abolition of inherited wealth” and the raising of animals for human use be made a criminal offense !
Many of these hardliners are refugees from the Centre-left labour Party. The Green Party leader has called for secrecy about the split, quite rightly pointing out that the ‘green’ image of the party would be electorally damaged is it’s true agenda was made public.
Ironically, two of the founding principles of the Green Party was no secrecy in internal debate and no factionalism.
Maybe it’s time for environmentalist to forget about political doctrines and focus promoting clean technology and good environmental practices.
Maybe it’s a time for inclusiveness, not promoting division.