If we could miraculously transport even the smartest people from
around 1900 to today's world, they would be simply astonished
at how we now understand things that had puzzled humans for
centuries.
Just over a hundred years ago, people had no idea how we inherit
and pass on traits or how a single cell could grow into an
organism.
They didn't know that atoms themselves had structure - the word
itself means indivisible. They didn't know that matter has very
strange properties that defy common sense. Or why there is
gravity. And they had no idea how things began, whether it was
life on earth or the universe itself.
BBC Tomorrow's World
These days because of fundamental discoveries we can answer or
at least begin to answer those mysteries. That has transformed
the way we see the world and often our everyday lives. Much of
what we take for granted today is a result of an interplay of
fundamental science and technology, with each driving the other
forward.
Almost every modern invention has one or often many
fundamental discoveries that make it possible. Sometimes, these
fundamental discoveries were hundreds of years old. Neither jet
engines nor rockets would be possible without a knowledge of
Newton's laws of motion.
There are big moments in science, like the discovery of the
structure of DNA that shift our perspectives. But even that
discovery was a milestone that built on work by Darwin and
Mendel and presaged today's biotechnology where the entire DNA
of a human being - the human genome - has been sequenced.
Global change calculator
Which groundbreaking discovery was uncovered in your life
time? Find out with the Tomorrow's World Global Change
Calculator.
That in turn has given us the ability to figure out how things go
wrong in genetic diseases and potentially how to fix them.
Scientists were recently able to modify the genes of a young
girl to cure her cancer.
We are no longer a complete black box, although our complexity
is such that we are only just beginning to understand how our
genes regulate the body and how they interact with our
environment.
Genetic technologies are likely to present society with some big
questions about how we see ourselves and what we want to use
our greater understanding and capability for.
That is also true of the Big Bang theory of how the Universe came
into existence. A hundred years ago mysteries such as how the
Universe came to exist were, for many, firmly in the realms of
faith.
Spurred on by the observation that the Universe is not constant,
but galaxies are always expanding away from each other, we
were able to work out that the Universe began with a Big Bang
from a single point.
This knowledge gives us insight into perhaps what is the biggest
question of all - where did everything come from? That insight
makes our small blue dot seem increasingly small, yet our quest
for knowledge of what is out there shows no signs of an
inferiority complex.
From the Apollo missions to the Cassini probe, the Hubble
telescope to the search for gravitational waves and exoplanets - all
of those breakthroughs seem to be making us more inquisitive
about space.
Today, much of how we see the world is through an electronic
screen. Computers in all their many guises are sources of
knowledge, but they are also increasingly how we present
ourselves to the rest of the world, and how we interact with
others.
Even a ubiquitous object like a smartphone depends on many
fundamental discoveries. Its powerful computer depends on
integrated chips made up of transistors, whose discovery
depended on an understanding of quantum mechanics.
The GPS in a smart phone depends on correcting the time from
satellites using both the special and general theories of relativity -
theories that people once thought would have no practical value. I
wonder how many understand all the discoveries that make the
little box work.
Computers are also driving developments that will continue to
challenge our view of the world. Machines that learn are already
among us and are changing the world in which we live.
They offer great potential in areas including healthcare and
improving other public services, and may soon result in driverless
cars and very sophisticated robots, but we need to make
conscious decisions about how we want smart machines to allow
humanity to flourish.
Discoveries themselves are morally neutral, but the use we make
of them are not. One discovery that shifted our view of the world
in two distinctly divergent directions was nuclear fission. Its
discovery led to the development of the most destructive
weapons known.
Some argue that the fear of destruction has been a powerful
motivator for peace, but this is hardly a stable solution as can be
seen with today's situation with North Korea. On the other hand,
nuclear fission also promised a reliable source of energy that was
once optimistically predicted to be 'too cheap to meter'.
Science is the pursuit of knowledge about ourselves and the world
around us. That pursuit of knowledge has also shaped the way
we view the world, as has the application of the knowledge. It has
transformed our lives, generally for the better.
We live nearly twice as long today as our ancestors did in 1900
and the quality of our lives is far better than it was then.
But the uses of science and technology are not shaped by science
and scientists alone. They depend on an interplay of cultural,
economic and political factors.
Science is a triumph of human knowledge and we can all share in
its excitement. At the same time, understanding its many uses can
help us be engaged in decisions that affect us all.