The
modern scientific revolution has certainly enabled man to make enormous strides
in harnessing Nature's power and potential for his own purposes. Yet, e should
be careful not to assume too easily that final and complete control is only a
matter of time.
Before the days of freedom of though and
research, progress was held up by ignorance and superstition. Early cosmologies
pronounced the earth flat, the fixed center of the universe. Being flat, it
therefore had edges, precipices in fact, so, wide travel and exploration was
discouraged, and none by the most intrepid would venture far. Religion
especially Judaism and the mediaeval Christianity rooted in Jewish concepts,
taught this cosmology as a religious fact and banned all scientific research
based on independent thought. It was believed that the world was God's -- in
the sense that he discouraged interference and undue investigation, all
knowledge necessary to man's salvation being contained in the Bible. Knowledge,
therefore, belonged to the Church. Men died at the stake to contest this
assertion. But it was the Renaissance which set thought free. Galileo
pronounced the earth round. the door was open, and science struggled free from
religion. Thus, the beginning of man's conquest of nature came about, and it
was not until the 20th century, well after the Darwinian theory of evolution
has been fully accepted, that science and religion came to terms, that the
enlightened began to realize it was a case of 'both and' rather than 'either
or.'
But whatever knowledge was groped after the
Renaissance, such knowledge had virtually no practical application, until the
18th century in Britain, which marked the beginning of the scientific
revolution. This was because there was virtually no such thing as systematic
scientific research. From times up to Watt's steam engine, applied science was
almost non-existent. But from 1733 onwards to the present day, discovery has
followed discovery with fantastic speed; the steam engine -- hence industrial
machines, 'horseless carriages,' and railways -- now of course petrol jet,
atomic and nuclear power; electricity with its manifold applications; radio,
telegraphy, radar, television; rocket propulsion and therefore space probes;
lighter metals resulting in freedom to use them for aircraft; plastics, with
their thousand one uses; man-made fibers and a host of others. And apart from
these dramatic discoveries, great advances have been made in medical science,
in public health and in crop growing -- to mention but a few.
The more man probes nature's laws, the more he
seems to control nature. Today, he an extract precious metals from ore -- he
can even transmute them; he can move earth and forests and rapidly lay roads,
construct airfields and parts, build new cities. He can defend himself by using
modern weapons, guns, bombs or missiles. He can ride the earth's surface by
car, rail, bicycle and ship; he can search the sea's bottom by using diving
gear, or sail beneath the surface for months on end in submarines. He can fly
over it in jet aircraft high over the earth's atmosphere. He can photograph the
moon from a few kilometers range and transmit the pictures instantaneously to
earth. We have seen him land on the moon. He can move and till the earth with
giant machines. He can defeat disease by antibiotics and prolong his life by
observing scientific health-rules. He can use natural products as never before;
timber for his daily newsprint; coal and oil for his machines; waterfalls for
his hydro-electric plant; steel and concrete for his buildings; nuclear power
to produce his electricity.
There seems to be no end to it all, and it is
easy to assume that man will soon master the world and eventually the universe.
This, on reflection, seems to be a fallacy, for what man is really doing is
discovering and applying the forces of nature -- not inventing them, and in his
applications, merely scratching the surface. Science may probe space, but it
cannot defeat the laws of time and motion. there is no foreseeable way tin
which man could ever venture beyond Mars; Medicine had advanced, but we still
suffer from the common cold. The psychiatrist can diagnose a psychopath, but
cannot cure him. The technologist can make a robot or a computer, but cannot
begin to understand the human brain.
It seems the giant intelligence we call God has
said 'thus far and no further'. And the facts of man's moral nature give no
cause for optimism. The truth seems to be that man has not and never will
master nature. It is nature which gently tolerates man.
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