The State of Science
by Peter J. Sumner
When I was at school studying for chemistry and physics 'O' levels, my mind used to ponder over the 'great' scientists and in particular, why we don't see any modern 'greats'. They all seemed to be a hundred years old or more. Forty years later, I still wonder about this.
Of course, we have had great scientists in more modern times but somehow they haven't been included in the school level textbooks. Even Einstein is not given his proper recognition. Arthur C. Clark, inventor of the geostationary communications satellite, must surely be a "great" but is sadly ignored. There are many others that should be mentioned but are lost to our younger generation.
The reality is that no real earth-shattering advance in science has been made in the last 50 years or so. Many readers are bound to disagree, but look at the world around you! We still drive cars which aren't so fundamentally different from those of a century ago. Our aircraft still operate on the same principles that the Wright brothers understood. Our Electricity supply still runs at 50 or 60 Hz even though we now know that higher frequencies would be much more efficient, and also because our electric motor designs have not been updated. Man supposedly went to the moon but what good did that bring? Has nuclear power ever made your bills less?
One miracle of engineering has taken place - the Internet. This would be the crowning glory of today's scientific age, except it wasn't planned, designed or made on scientific principles. Already, we need another Internet since the present one is becoming grossly overloaded. Some people suggest that ten Internets are needed. We can't make another easily because no single person fully understands how the first one grew so successfully!
Looking back on some of the 'great' scientists, the full potential of their discoveries have not been realised. Very few people come close to understanding much of Einstein's work. Then, Tesla provided us with such fantastic principles which we haved failed to put to good use. Perhaps mankind's biggest sin in recent times was the treatment of Soviet science by the West in the so-called Cold War. Even today, really great discoveries made by soviet scientists are totally unknown in the western world. The same can be said for China. Even more recently, there exists a blockade on Muslim countries.
This leads us to a fundamental question. Is mankind getting progressively more stupid? Really, it is a fair question as so much of our knowledge is based on theories rather than laws, and there remains so much unknown or unexplained. Why isn't science advancing at an incredible rate? We probably have the most educated people ever existing on our planet, plus the flow of knowledge worldwide via the internet. Either we are doing something terribly wrong or we are just plain dumb!
Just possibly, education isn't the answer. Many of the great inventors from the past had little or no education. It is also somewhat surprising as to how many were clergymen. Be that as it may, inventors aren't necessarily scientists - in fact most were not! This brings us to the statement I made previously about "no real earth-shattering advance in science". Consider it again if you disagreed earlier! What we see in our daily lives today are new applications of old inventions, not science. Take the cellular phone as an example. What is it? A telephone. How does it work? By radio. All old stuff! But what new science how you heard about recently?
Earlier, I mentioned Arthur C Clark. An inventor definitely, but was he a scientist? I must say yes to this. He had a brilliant mind, being an author of science fiction novals (2001 - A Space Odessy perhaps being the most well known.) which generally stand up to scientific scrutiny of possibility - bearing in mind these were set in future times. But it is his quotations which most impressed me.
In order to understand the limits of the possible, one must explore the realms of the impossible.
Technology, when sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.
Can there be any better definitions? This is what science is all about. But the impossible is an all too real hurdle for many genuine scientists. Here I reproduce a section taken from a U.S. Patent which illustrates the problem of the impossible.
"The Applicant, therefore, had reason to believe that the work on cold fusion would progress if the auxiliary current activation circuit were to be used.
However, in the event, the pioneer work of Fleishmann and Ports became the subject of such criticism that there was no prospect of getting R & D funding to take the subject invention forward and one is confronted with a chicken and egg scenario where disbelief of cold fusion as a scientific possibility stands in the way of finding sponsorship for the development."
Howard Aspden, quoted from his US Patent No. 5,734,122.
Now one can understand why so many of the scientists and inventors from the past were clergymen. In those days, no person would dare to criticise a man of the church in public! It makes one wonder though, how much science was lost due to criticism of non clergymen. The point of funding is also pertinent. In todays world, a scientist is forced to act like a begger in order to obtain grants. Whereas, the clergy of the past received money from all who crossed their path. Criticism and poverty thereby make the impossible impossible in another sense as well!
In today's world, there is a need to enable funding not only for specific projects but also for general scientific research. The "basic" formulation of the laws of science, and hopefully, the discovery of new laws and concepts, are totally ignored by funding agencies and corporations simply because there is no visible goal and thus no future financial gain guaranteed! My suggestion is that religious organizations should fund science rather than governments and private industry. The churches, mosques and temples certainly have much greater fundraising ability than our governments. The advance of science should be looked upon as the ultimate charity - being for the benefit of all mankind!
Further, the use of patents needs to be revised. There should be laws to prevent purchase of patents solely for the purpose of preventing their commercial application. For example, there are many cases of patents purchased by oil companies to prevent the use of alternate fuels in our motor vehicles. The span of time giving protection to the patent owner should be severely curtailed or even withdrawn completely if it can be shown that the patent content is not being actively utilized. There should also be an alternative to patents. A system similar to that found in open source computer software, with its General Public License, could be adopted to cover the basic science requirements. This would give adequate recognition and copyright protection to the original scientists without the obnoxious financial aspects of patents. It may be noted that the sheer cost of obtaining a patent makes it beyond the reach of many scientists. In countries that claim to be democratic, it is perhaps surprising that there is no method to raise an objection to a patent - you can only dispute the ownership in court. Many US patents, in my opinion, are quite nonsense, having no scientific content which could not be found by a schoolboy using Wikipedia! Furthermore, the US patent office seems to issue multiple patents with identical content. In any other country, there would surely be allegations of corruption or mal-practice lodged. The US government should investigate and generally clean-up the US patent office.
This rather rambling article hopefully should stimulate others to think about the basic problem of how to advance science in general, and how to encourage scientists to work in non-commercial areas of the "basics". Your feedback is requested. A public forum on this site is ready to receive your suggestions.