Man’s mastery over nature
The modern scientific revolution has certainly enabled man to make enormous strides in harnessing Nature’s power and potential for his own purposes. Yet, e should be careful not to assume too easily that final and complete control is only a matter of time.
Before the days of freedom of though and research, progress was held up by ignorance and superstition. Early cosmologies pronounced the earth flat, the fixed center of the universe. Being flat, it, therefore, had edges, precipices in fact, so, wide travel and exploration was discouraged, and none by the most intrepid would venture far. Religion especially Judaism and the mediaeval Christianity rooted in Jewish concepts taught this cosmology as a religious fact and banned all scientific research based on independent thought. It was believed that the world was God’s — in the sense that he discouraged interference and undue investigation, all knowledge necessary to man’s salvation being contained in the Bible. Knowledge, therefore, belonged to the Church. Men died at the stake to contest this assertion. But it was the Renaissance which set thought-free. Galileo pronounced the earth round. the door was open, and science struggled free from religion. Thus, the beginning of man’s conquest of nature came about, and it was not until the 20th century, well after the Darwinian theory of evolution has been fully accepted, that science and religion came to terms, that the enlightened began to realize it was a case of ‘both and’ rather than ‘either-or.’
But whatever knowledge was groped after the Renaissance, such knowledge had virtually no practical application, until the 18th century in Britain, which marked the beginning of the scientific revolution. This was because there was virtually no such thing as systematic scientific research. From times up to Watt’s steam engine, applied science was almost non-existent. But from 1733 onwards to the present day, the discovery has followed discovery with fantastic speed; the steam engine — hence industrial machines, ‘horseless carriages,’ and railways — now, of course, petrol jet, atomic and nuclear power; electricity with its manifold applications; radio, telegraphy, radar, television; rocket propulsion and therefore space probes; lighter metals resulting in the freedom to use them for aircraft; plastics, with their thousand one uses; man-made fibers and a host of others. And apart from these dramatic discoveries, great advances have been made in medical science, in public health, and in crop growing — to mention but a few.
The more man probes nature’s laws, the more he seems to control nature. Today, he an extract precious metals from ore — he can even transmute them; he can move earth and forests and rapidly lay roads, construct airfields and parts, build new cities. He can defend himself by using modern weapons, guns, bombs, or missiles. He can ride the earth’s surface by car, rail, bicycle, and ship; he can search the sea’s bottom by using diving gear or sail beneath the surface for months on end in submarines. He can fly over it in jet aircraft high over the earth’s atmosphere. He can photograph the moon from a few kilometers range and transmit the pictures instantaneously to earth. We have seen him land on the moon. He can move and till the earth with giant machines. He can defeat disease by antibiotics and prolong his life by observing scientific health rules. He can use natural products as never before; timber for his daily newsprint; coal and oil for his machines; waterfalls for his hydro-electric plant; steel and concrete for his buildings; nuclear power to produce his electricity.
There seems to be no end to it all, and it is easy to assume that man will soon master the world and eventually the universe. This, on reflection, seems to be a fallacy, for what man is really doing is discovering and applying the forces of nature — not inventing them, and in his applications, merely scratching the surface. Science may probe space, but it cannot defeat the laws of time and motion. there is no foreseeable way in which man could ever venture beyond Mars; Medicine had advanced, but we still suffer from the common cold. The psychiatrist can diagnose a psychopath, but cannot cure him. The technologist can make a robot or a computer, but cannot begin to understand the human brain.
It seems the giant intelligence we call God has said ‘thus far and no further. And the facts of man’s moral nature give no cause for optimism. The truth seems to be that man has not and never will master nature. It is nature which gently tolerates man.
