ABSTRACT
The aims of science, rather like the aims of religion, are directed towards resolving uncertainty. The two operate in spheres of human curiosity and concern which are seldom the same, of course, and they employ methods which are very different and which are sometimes seen as competing. Be that as it may, they both address the unknown. Moreover, just as the human contemplation of religion has affected the human conceptualization of it, so the human exploration of science has altered the range of scientific questions which humans explore. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in those areas of concern which address the macroenvironment of the earth, for a product of the closing years of the second millennium AD has been the scientifically derived realization of impacts which stem from possibilities that were scientifically identified. They are impacts displayed on the gross physical stuff of the earth: on climates, on seas and freshwaters; on soils, on vegetation, and on a host of other socially defined ‘resources’. These are significant, not in themselves, but because they stem from, and they affect, people and the possibility of peopled futures. They are aggravated, too, by the needs of people themselves and, even more, by the ambitions and competitions of human institutions.
