Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, “Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.” Considering how the human race developed from crude hunter gatherer communities to medieval towns, cities, kingdoms, and empires, and finally to the modern nations we know today, one can’t also help but wonder at the capacity of the human mind to perceive and determine things and surroundings so that life would be easier to live as well as more knowable in order to survive its dangers as well.
Thus, the innate gift of men to think of the physical world in definite abstract patterns and the necessity to satisfy basic needs in the best possible manner gave rise to the use of science and mathematics in everyday life. Science and mathematics go hand in hand in qualifying and quantifying the natural world.
The golden age of Ancient Greece 2000 years ago produced the great minds credited for the foundations of science and mathematics. Aristotle founded biology. Hippocrates is the father of medicine. Euclid and Erastothenes laid down geometry and mathematical concepts. Meanwhile, ancient engineers defied Nature and utilized natural resources by building palaces, fortifications, and amazing monuments. Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the Coliseum in Rome are examples of ancient ingenuity that awe and puzzle scholars to this very day.
The Middle Ages saw the transition from general notions of the nature of materials and phenomenon to the more definite and codified study of the material world that lifted the fog of superstition and the intellectual decline brought about by despotism and barbaric invasions. It was in the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries that the mental disciplines blossomed into more reliable systems and fostered a more critical and objective attitude.
Copernicus remodeled the Solar System. Newton formulated the Law of Gravity and Inertia. Lavoisier formalized Chemistry. As more and more innovations were initiated in science and mathematics, later scientists and inventors drew upon these stores of knowledge to contribute to the technologies we enjoy today.
Medicines have neutralized most infectious and fatal illnesses. Sanitation in population centers improved. Medical equipment has superior capability to diagnose and cure diseases. Life expectancy became higher. Buildings and infrastructures became taller, larger, and stronger. TV, radio, computers, and cellphones are now common. Not to mention mp3s, iPods, and laptops. Cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes, military and commuter crisscross the globe nonstop. Food production and manufacture of consumer goods feed, clothe, and accessorize millions. Water and electricity are supplied to almost all inhabitants of every country.
People around the world benefit from the applications of science and mathematics. And like yeast to dough, technology facilitated the exponential increase in global population that is poised to occupy every habitable niche in the planet.
However, the fruits of technology seen in urbanization, industry, manufacturing, and medicine come with a heavy and potentially devastating price for the whole human race: Despoliation and Destruction of Mother Nature.
Science and mathematics not only gave birth to the systems that modernized everyday living and saved lives but also spawned a resource devouring monster that harmed millions. Whole forests and agricultural lands are flattened to supply wood or are cleared for mining metals, drilling oil, or urban development. Species become extinct or are displaced from the destruction of their habitats. Effluents from factories, power plants, and transports pollute the soil, water, and air. Many fall victims to contamination. As a result of the arms race, weapons of unimaginable killing and explosive power threaten to wipe out plant, animal, and human life from the face of the earth.
Fortunately, scientists have formed ways to counter and minimize the global threat of pollution, overpopulation, species extinction, nuclear disaster, in order to save humanity and the Nature in which we live.
German industrial giants are now transferring technology that recycles chemical waste into harmless byproducts. Scientists are looking up to the promise of solar, water, and wind energy sources. Conservationists fight to save forests, seas, and biodiversity from exploitation and annihilation. Recycling technology staves off the demand for more raw materials for consumer goods and construction materials. Governments, spurred by scientific findings and ecologists, are making the concerted effort to reduce fossil fuel emissions and products that emit CFC’s, chemicals that deteriorate global warming and deplete the ozone layer.
Thus, sciences and their experts are working double time to save Nature, hence preserving human life.
Summing up, science and mathematics undeniably aided man’s drive to improve living conditions, yet this eventually led to the abuse and the damaging of Nature. Realizing this mistake, scientists now work to undo some of the harm, prevent more depredations, and disseminate needful information.
Science and mathematics have come a long way in modifying its methods and produce outstanding results that we enjoy today. Hopefully scientists and mathematicians will find ways to remedy Nature’s problems and permanently solve them, as the crusade is still an ongoing collaboration between experts and concerned citizens.
Albert Einstein said, “Science is but a refinement of everyday thinking”. People in the scientific community need to constantly come up with ways to save Nature and instill environmental awareness in people.
[An Essay Written for High School Students]
BBC reports on child molesting priests
{ November 9, 2006 @ 2:27 pm } · { Social Commentary }
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BBC had run a feature on Catholic priests last Oct. 15 Sunday here, who have sexually violated children. Never mind the court cases that were hushed and abruptly closed, never mind the molesters being allowed to remain in their ministry and transferred to unsuspecting parishes, and never mind grown men breaking down in sobs as they recounted childhood trauma with old men having their way with their prepubescent bodies.
As a Christian myself, I am both enraged and fearful that such deviant, oppressive, and corrupting behaviors are being shown by a considerable number of the ordained who have spent years in the seminary praying and studying the Bible. I am enraged and fearful that they perpetrate their subterfuges on the innocent trusting children of their parishioners. The question I wanted to ask for so long is, are the enemies of God destroying a religion from within? If so, are other faiths being infiltrated also, to make hell on earth?
The existential philosophers of Scandinavia, Germany, and France, and even the Persian Omar Khayyam in his “Rubaiyat” have foreseen for our times the perniciousness of moral and political authorities treading the immoral path, the inauthentic, the thinking of inhumane humans. They had said, “You define your own existence, be not defined by the ‘crowd’”.
The damaging acts of some prurient old priests are not enough for me to lose my faith, but they are enough to make me wary of the events and forces in the world all impeding the progress of human unity.