About one hundred years ago, a speaker at the Royal Academy of Science stood up and proudly announced that the time was fast approaching where mankinf\d would fundamentally understand all that there was to know about the entire universe.
All that really remained was a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's.
He recieved a standing ovation.
A century and a bit later, that statement has never seemed so foolish.
It's an old truism, but we've learned one sure thing, that the more that we learn, the more that we realise how little we understand.
There was a time when there was such a thing as a scientist.
No longer.
Nor is there a phsyicist or a biologist.
Knowledge has become fragmented,
As more and more complexity is uncovered by more and more research, is there realy any such entity as a scientist anymore?
Do we need to revamp our definitions of what it is that constitutes a scientist?
How many molecular biologists understand string theory?
Or physicists stem cell research?
And yet, could there not be unifying principles that could underpin the increasingly complex and fragmented disciplines, such as spontaneous organisation, order through complexity?
How difficult is it for people to break the heavy inertia of the prevailing paradigm when people spend their lives studying one tiny aspect of a small field of an incredibly complex area of study?
We no longer have scientists per se, we have specialists that practice science.
Where are our general practitioners?
What price tenure?
Why do scientists need to put a potential dollar value on the outcome of their curiosity?
Can science be conducted without the profit motive?
Who will fund indulgent curiosity?
Biotechnology such as GM crops, promise to increase yield per hectare, but the problem here is that products that promise these increased yields require a huge amount of money to develop.
Are we seriously expected to believe that venture capitalists are investing money and promoting their GM seeds out of a benign benevolence?
1.3 billion people live on less than a dollar a day.
3 billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day.
These are the countries that need the food the most.
Where is the profit for companies such as Monsanto? Are their investors altruists?
GM crops are about increasing profits to the company that patents them.
They're about decreasing bio-diversity.
Good scientists now work largely for the profit motive engendered in the corporate sector.
What pure research is being done is fragmented and in isolation from the rich cross-currency of multi-disciplinarianism.
Perhaps there is no other way.
But just as we are losing biodiversity for increased profits with GM crops, we are also losing the rich diversity of general scientists.
yechydda,