Re: Future Science . . . Or Not . . .

Curmudgeon [no longer around] said Aug 6, 2007, 4:22 PM:
 

As Domus says, lines between formal disciplines in science are blurring. I recently listened to a lecture by Richard Feynman from the 60s and already at that time he was pointing out that some sciences such as chemistry were already nearly a branch of physics, as quantum electrodynamics and quantum mechanics were found to explain the operations of chemistry. And that was over 40 years ago.

Feynman (who is my muse when it comes to science, outside geology) viewed science as finding out how the world works, that's it in a nutshell. He believed that god was used to explain things we didn't understand, and he believed there was plenty of mystery not yet explained.

He also distinguished between science and technology, while acknowledging that this distinction was not generally made by the general public. Here is where ethics becomes paramount. What, at the current point in human history, is ethical action, is a question which will be answered differently at different times. What we can do is not always what we should do, and this should has not always been addressed in modern times, with numerous unintended results… and that is another big issue: unintended consequences, as well as asymmetry of risk.