Science

[garytse86]

We owe all our prosperity to science, what do you think about this topic?

[atinymonkey]

I think that is a vague statement, much less an entire topic. It's not as if an amoebae has the slightest idea of the scientific method. It's like the 'the industrial revolution was the greatest period of human development, discuss' questions they ask at middle school.

[Skye]

Science on it's own doesn't *do* much, it's the applications that solve and cause problems.

[J'Dona]

It depends on whose prosperity we're talking about Science has certainly helped the northern hemisphere to prosper, in general, but when the Spanish walked onto South America with shiny guns, the Incas didn't prosper very much from it...

 

Whether humans prosper from science or not basically falls down to how the new knowledge is used. The world is made up of many nations, all of which would prefer that only their own prospered (and maybe their allies). Most science is shared amongst them, like medical technology and electronics, which help to improve living conditions, lifespans, etc. and make the human race as a whole more prosperous. But a lot of scienctific research isn't shared because of its, um, 'alternative' applications ie. nukes, which tend to be designed explicitly to make another nation rather less prosperous. Science has also brought about new methods of, for example, argiculture, which have massively increased today's food production, but will eventually cause severe soil erosion to the point of almost non-production. The methods exist to manage the land effectively without ecological damage, but to make it really as effective at feeding the people as it is now, a lot more research would be needed, but that research is currently going into synthesising new artificial fertilisers

 

So as for whether or not we owe our prosperity to science... that depends on which nation you live in...

[Dudde]

that was an oddly sensical post

^

 

who's J'Dona?

 

I agree