Seeing Further

by Bill Bryson

  It may seem topsy-turvy that cosmologists can speak confidently about galaxies billions of light years away, whereas theories of diet and child rearing – issues that everyone cares about – are still tentative and controversial. But astronomy is, quite genuinely, far simpler than the human sciences. Stars are simple: they’re so big and hot that their content is broken down into simple atoms – none match the intricate structure of even an insect, let alone a human. Our everyday world presents twenty-first-century Einsteins with intellectual challenges just as daunting as those of the cosmos and the quantum.

  THE ‘RELIEF OF MAN’S ESTATE’

  The Royal Society’s founders, though fascinated by weird animals, air-pumps and telescopes, were also engaged with the practical issues of their time – the rebuilding of London, navigation and the exploration of the New World. Our horizons have expanded. But the same engagement is imperative in the twenty-first century: there are more people than ever on our planet, all empowered by ever more powerful technology.

  Technology advances in symbiosis with science. Computers, for instance, owe their burgeoning power to progress in materials science (and in mathematics too, as Ian Stewart’s chapter reminds us). The silicon chip was perhaps the most transformative single invention of the last century. It has allowed miniaturisation, spawning mobile phones and an Internet with global reach – promoting economic growth, while being sparing of energy and resources.

  It was physicists who developed the World Wide Web, and the international scientific community has benefited immensely. Astronomers or geneticists can quickly download any body of data and analyse it. And the Internet has hugely benefited our colleagues in the developing world who formerly depended on slow and inefficient postal services.

  A few years ago, three young Indian mathematicians invented a faster scheme for factoring large numbers – something that would be crucial for code-breaking. They posted their results on the web. Such was the interest that within just a day, twenty thousand people had downloaded the work, which was the topic of hastily convened discussions in many centres of mathematical research around the world.

  There is a stark contrast here with the struggles of an earlier Indian mathematician to achieve recognition. In 1913 Srinivasa Ramanujan, a clerk in Mumbai, mailed long screeds of mathematical formulae to G.H. Hardy in Cambridge. Hardy had the percipience to recognise that Ramanujan was not the typical green-ink scribbler who finds numerical patterns in the bible or the pyramids. He arranged for Ramanujan to come to Cambridge, and did all he could to foster his genius. (Ramanujan became an FRS. But culture shock and poor health led him to an early death.)

  Advances in information technology amaze us by their rapidity – iPhones would have seemed magic thirty years ago. Each mobile phone today – indeed, each washing machine – has more computing power than NASA could deploy on the Apollo programme. We can’t of course guess what twenty-first-century inventions will seem ‘magic’ to us today. Scientists have a poor record as forecasters. Ernest Rutherford averred that nuclear energy was moonshine; Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), said, ‘There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home’; and an earlier Astronomer Royal said space travel was utter bilge. I have no crystal ball and won’t add to this inglorious roll call.

  Francis Bacon pointed out that the most transformative advances are the least predictable. He cited gunpowder, silk and the mariner’s compass, and contrasted them with (for instance) the techniques for printing, which progressed incrementally.

  Incremental steps from today’s technology will, perhaps within a decade, offer each of us (at least in the developed world) high-bandwidth communication with everyone else, and instant access to all recorded knowledge, all music and all visual art. As the genome is better understood, the read out of our genetic code may tell us how (and perhaps when) we are most likely to die. Computer networks will continue to become ever more powerful and pervasive.

  Computers may, within less than fifty years, achieve a wide range of human capabilities. Of course, in some respects this has happened already. The most basic pocket calculators can hugely surpass us at arithmetic. IBM’s ‘Deep Blue’ beat Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. But not even the most advanced robot can recognise and handle the pieces on a real chessboard as adeptly as a five-year-old child. There’s a long way to go before interactive human-level ‘robotic intelligence’ is achieved.

  An arena where advanced robots will surely have clear advantages over humans is outer space. By mid-century, the entire solar system will have been explored by flotillas of tiny robotic craft. And, even if people haven’t followed them, ‘fabricators’ may perform large construction projects, using raw materials that need not come from Earth.

  Future robots may relate to their surroundings (and to people) as adeptly as we do, through our eyes and other sense organs. Indeed, their far faster ‘thoughts’ and reactions could give them an advantage over us. Everyone’s lifestyle and work patterns will then surely be transformed. Robots will be perceived as intelligent beings, to which (or to whom) we can relate, at least in some respects, as we would to our fellow-humans. Moral issues then arise. We generally accept an obligation to ensure that other human beings (and at least some animal species) can fulfil their ‘natural’ potential. Will we have the same duty to sophisticated robots, our own creations? Should we feel guilty about exploiting them? Should we fret if they are underemployed, frustrated, or bored?

  ‘Deep Blue’ didn’t work out its strategy like a human player: it exploited its computational speed to explore millions of alternative series of moves and responses before deciding an optimum move. Likewise, machines may make scientific discoveries that have eluded unaided human brains – but by testing out millions of possibilities rather than via a theory or strategy. However, the programmer will get the acclaim – just as, in Olympic equestrian events, the medal goes to the rider, not the horse.

  Some kind of mental prosthetics may become essential if theorists are to make headway in the most difficult fields. Meteorology and astronomy have been hugely boosted by the ability to simulate a ‘virtual universe’. A unified theory of the physical forces, or a theory of consciousness, might be beyond the powers of unaided human brains, just as surely as quantum mechanics would flummox a chimpanzee.

  Another speculation – and a ‘wild card’ in population projections – is that the human lifespan could be substantially extended. Some Americans, worried that they’ll die before this nirvana is reached, bequeath their bodies to be ‘frozen’ on their death, hoping that future generations will resurrect them or download their brains into a computer. For my part, I’d rather end my days in an English churchyard than a Californian refrigerator.

  But flaky futurologists aren’t always wrong. Students can derive more stimulus from first-rate science fiction than from second-rate science. We should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to wacky-seeming concepts – just as the Royal Society’s first Fellows did 350 years ago.

  A HAZARDOUS WORLD

  One thing we can be sure of, however: there will be an ever-widening gulf between what science allows us to do and what it is prudent or ethical to do – more doors that science could open but which are best kept closed. In respect of (for instance) human reproductive cloning, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology and robotics, regulation will be called for, on ethical as well as prudential grounds.

  But the social and geopolitical context in which these issues will be debated fifty years hence is even harder to forecast than the science itself. The upheavals of the present century will surely be as turbulent as those in the last.

  An overwhelming challenge for governments will be to ensure food, energy and resources for a rising and increasingly empowered population, and to avoid catastrophic environmental change or societal disruption. By 2060 there will, barring a global catastrophe, be far more people than today. Fifty years ago the world population was below 3 billion. It has mo
re than doubled since then, to 6.8 billion today. And it’s projected to reach around 9 billion by mid-century. By then, it will be in Asia – not Europe nor the US – that the world’s physical and intellectual capital will be concentrated.

  More than half of the world’s people live in countries where fertility has now fallen below replacement level. If this trend quickly extended worldwide, then the global population could gradually decline after mid-century – a development that would surely be benign.

  Another firm prediction is that, half a century from now, the world will be warmer than today – though by how much is uncertain, as Stephen Schneider’s chapter explains. Shifts in weather patterns (especially in rainfall) impact most grievously on those least able to adapt, and on countries that have themselves contributed minimally to global CO2 emissions. The prospects seem especially gloomy in Africa, where there will be a billion more people by mid-century than there are today and the birth rate remains high. Climate change aggravates the challenge of feeding this growing population. What should make us more anxious is the significant probability of triggering a grave and irreversible global trend: rising sea levels due to the melting of Greenland’s icecap; runaway release of methane in the tundra, and so forth.

  Collective human actions are ravaging the biosphere and threatening biodiversity. There have been five great extinctions in the geological past. Humans are now causing a sixth. The extinction rate is a thousand times higher than normal and is increasing. In the words of Robert May, my immediate predecessor as Royal Society President, ‘we are destroying the book of life before we have read it’. Our Earth harbours millions of species that have not yet even been identified – mainly insects and bacteria.

  Biodiversity is often proclaimed as a crucial component of human well-being and economic growth. It manifestly is: we’re clearly harmed if fish stocks dwindle to extinction; there are plants in the rainforest whose gene pool might be useful to us. But for many of us, these ‘instrumental’ and anthropocentric arguments aren’t the only compelling ones. Preserving the richness of our biosphere has value in its own right, over and above what it means to us humans.

  Overall, our lives are getting safer and healthier. But in our ever more interconnected world, there are new threats whose consequences could be so widespread that even a tiny probability is disquieting. Infectious diseases are a resurgent hazard. In the coming decades there could be an ‘arms race’ between ever-improving preventative measures, and the growing virulence of the pathogens that could plague us – the latter augmented by risks of ‘bioerror’ or ‘bioterror’. The spread of epidemics is aggravated by rapid air travel, plus the huge concentrations of people in megacities with fragile infrastructures.

  We’re all precariously dependent on elaborate networks – electricity grids, air-traffic control, the Internet, just-in-time delivery and so forth. It’s crucial to optimise the resilience of such systems against accidental malfunction – or against wilful disruption by individuals or small groups empowered by technology. The global village will have its village idiots.

  Scientific and technical effort has never been applied optimally to human welfare. Some subjects have had the ‘inside track’ and gained disproportionate resources. Huge funds are still devoted to new weaponry. On the other hand, environmental protection, renewable energy, and so forth deserve more effort. Indeed, US President Barack Obama has urged that the development of clean carbon-free energy should have the priority accorded to the Apollo programme in the 1960s.

  THE ROLE OF ACADEMIES AND ‘CITIZEN SCIENTISTS’

  In confronting global societal challenge in the twenty-first century – these ‘threats without enemies’ – we can derive inspiration from some of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb. Among them were some of the great intellects from the ‘heroic age’ of nuclear science – Hans Bethe and Rudolf Peierls, for instance. These individuals set us a fine example. Fate had assigned them a pivotal role in history. When war ended, they returned with relief to peacetime academic pursuits. But they didn’t say that they were ‘just scientists’ and that the use made of their work was up to politicians. They continued as engaged citizens – promoting efforts to control the power they had helped unleash. They maintained an informed commitment for the rest of their lives – none more than Joseph Rotblat, the founder of the Pugwash Conferences.

  In his valedictory address as Royal Society President in 1995, Michael Atiyah reminded us that ‘the ivory tower is no longer a sanctuary’ and that scientists have a special responsibility. We feel there is something lacking in parents who don’t care what happens to their children in adulthood, even though this is largely beyond their control. Likewise, scientists shouldn’t be indifferent to the fruits of their ideas – their intellectual creations. They should try to foster benign spin-offs – and of course help to bring their work to market when appropriate. But they should campaign to resist, so far as they can, ethically dubious or threatening applications. And they should, as ‘citizen scientists’, be prepared to engage in public debate and discussion. The challenges of the twenty-first century are more complex and intractable than those of the nuclear age.

  In the UK, an ongoing dialogue with parliamentarians on embryos and stem cells has led to a generally admired legal framework. On the other hand, the GM crops debate went wrong because scientists came in too late, when opinion was already polarised between eco-campaigners on the one side and commercial interests on the other. We have recently done better on nanotechnology, by raising the key concerns ‘upstream’ of any legislation or commercial developments. The Society can draw on collective expertise to clarify key issues – and perhaps identify them before others can.

  FURTHER READING

  SIMON SCHAFFER

  James Delbourgo, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2006)

  Patricia Fara, An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment (London, Icon Books, 2003)

  Tal Golan, Laws of Men and Laws of Nature: The History of Scientific Expert Testimony in England and America (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2004)

  J.L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1979)Bruno Latour, ‘Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern’, Critical Inquiry, 30 (2004), 25–48

  Trent A. Mitchell, ‘The politics of experiment in the eighteenth century: the pursuit of audience and the manipulation of consensus in the debate over lightning rods’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 31 (1998), 307–31

  Sir Basil Schonland, The Flight of Thunderbolts, 2nd edition (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966).

  RICHARD HOLMES

  The author has drawn on the following sources for this article:

  Thomas Baldwin, Airopaedia, containing the Narrative of a Balloon Excursion from Chester, with illustrations (London, 1786)

  Joseph Banks, The Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Banks 1765–1820, edited by Neil Chambers, 6 vols (London, Pickering & Chatto Ltd, 2007)

  Tiberius Cavallo FRS, A Treatise on the History and Practice of Aerostation (London, 1785)

  Erasmus Darwin, The Loves of the Plants (London, J. Johnson, 1789)

  Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, Descriptions des Experiences des Machines Aerostatiques de MM Montgolfier (Paris, 1783)

  Nathan G. Goodman (ed.), The Ingenious Dr Franklin: Selected Scientific Letters of Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931)

  Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder (London, HarperCollins, 2008)

  Dr John Jeffries FRS, A Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages with monsieur Blanchard, as presented to the Royal Society (London, 1786)

  Paul Keen, ‘The Balloonomania: Science and Spectacle in 1780s England’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 39.4 (2006)

  Mi Gyung Kim, ‘Balloon Mania: News in the Air’,
Endeavour, 28, Issue 4 (December 2004)

  Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement (London, Giles de La Mare Publishers, 1999)

  Vincenzo Lunardi, My Aerial Voyages in England (London, 1785)

  Thomas Martyn, Hints of Important Uses for Aerostatic Globes (London, 1784)

  John Southern, A Treatise upon Aerostatic Machines (London, 1786)

  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd edition, 1797. Major article on ‘Aerostation’

  Gentleman’s Magazine (September 1784)

  Le Tableau de Paris (1 decembre 1783)

  Monthly Review, 69 (1783).

  HENRY PETROSKI

  Michael R. Bailey (ed.) Robert Stephenson – The Eminent Engineer (Aldershot, Hants., Ashgate, 2003)

  Derrick Beckett, Stephensons’ Britain (Newton Abbot, Devon, David & Charles, 1984)

  Government Board of Engineers, The Quebec Bridge Over the St Lawrence River Near the City of Quebec On the Line of the Canadian National Railways (Ottawa, Department of Railways and Canals, 1918)

  Francis E. Griggs Jr, ‘Joseph B. Strauss, Charles A. Ellis and the Golden Gate Bridge: Justice at Last’, Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, in press

  Peter R. Lewis, Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay: Reinvestigating the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, Tempus, 2004)