ABSTRACT
We have lived through the two giant centuries of science. Just imagine a world without the dynamo (Faraday, 1821), a world without antibiotics (Fleming, penicillin, 1928), or even a world without jet engines and atomic bombs. In a Royal Society of London publication, Population: The Complex Reality (1994), the past president of the Royal Society, Sir Michael Atiyah, wrote, “Most of the problems we face are ultimately consequences of the progress of science, so we must acknowledge a collective responsibility. Fortunately, science opens up possibilities of alleviating our problems, and we must see that these are pursued.” In the same volume, Sir Crispin Tickell, former British ambassador to the UN, wrote, “It would be nice to think that the solutions to some of our present problems could be drawn from past experience, but in this case the past is a poor guide to the future … our current situation is unique.”
