The recent cover story of New Scientist really attracted my interest - "The World's Biggest Ideas".
Top Ten Scientific Ideas
1) The Big Bang - the concepts that describes the origin of universe. It was proposed that after a few seconds of the beginning of the universe, the temperature was 10 billion degrees high; radiation, protons, neutrons and "dark matter" were present in known proportions. Then everything cools down, and with action of gravity, density contrasts grow and gradually form our universe.
2) Evolution - Darwinian Theory. Cumulative evolution is guided by the force of natural selection. Life starts with a single bacterium, and diversity stems from successive branchings (Speciation), and evolves into different species. Survival of the fittest.
3) Quantum Mechanics - study of how subatomic particles behave and provide a framework for physical theories. The article linked quantum mechanics to abortion, free will and human identity. Interesting subtle links.
4) Theory of Everything - theory of general relativity, gravity, string theory. Dimensions, forces and particles. We have yet to find such a kind of Theory which encompasses Everything. But we will try.
5) Risk - Quantifying risk and differentiating between risk and uncertainty, measurable randomness or uncontrollable acts of God. Growth of the blaming games, litigation and compensation culture. Risk assesment, management and control. In fact, the fundamental notion of my current study.
6) Chaos - Unpredictable, the world is packed with possibilities.
7) Relativity - Einstein! Mass can be converted into energy, speed of electromagnetic radiation is a special scale of nature. Einstein's relativistic theories also redefines the way we think on intuition, and change the absolute concepts which were once so deeply ingrained in our views.
8) Climate Change - global warming, iceberg melting, fllods, draughts, causes of recent Katrina, etc etc...
9) Tectonics - Study of Earth Sciences, geology, plates movements, plate tectonics.
10) Science - pursuit of truth, to answer everything in the universe. Combination of theories and experiments. Suddenly reminds me of the X-file "The truth is out there". hehe.
Enough blabbering. Back to work now.
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2 comments:
I would expect this list from "New Scientist" and think it is pretty good.
Still, it is a little disappointing that no ideas having to do with human understanding - either of others or ourselves - would be included in the greatest ideas that changed our world.
Perhaps if more study was devoted to understanding ourselves, all of the knowlege acquired about other things could be put to better use than it has.
Just a thought.
Yes it is summarized from the New scientist, hehe.
It is intriguing that human yearn to find out everything in the universe, but fail to understand just ourselves clearly. The quest for knowledge somehow looks outwards, we tend to act outwards and think externally, seldom do we look inwards and reflect.
To most people, self-exploration is normally regarded as more 'religious'. And science tends to reject religions as both of them use different perspective and methods to understand and explain things. While science demands proofs and logical explanation of all things, religion focuses on more subtle and unseen force that drives us. Science is cold and hard facts, religions is more in faith and beliefs.
I think that science and religion are actually complements to each other. we can't live on one without the other. Our personal development is just not complete without both. Buddhism actually looks into the reconcillation of both, and there were quite some number of authors actively researching in this field too. It is good to see the growth of awareness of undstanding ourselves.
i myself too is still a novice learning to understand this world which is full of wonders. Please do share your experiences and outlook, you have lots of them. thnks.
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