“Science has proved to be the enemy of man” How far is this true
On the face of it, the statement seems to be utter nonsense. Today, if we have a toothache, we can visit a dentist who can perform a painless extraction or make a permanent filling. A hundred years ago, dentistry was carried out by a barber with a pair of pliers. Medicine, through science, has made astonishing strides in improving a lot of mankind. Today, an appendix can be removed in less than half an hour. Fifty years ago, the appendix would have been perforated, with fatal results. Today, more children survive childbirth, more people live longer than ever before, thanks to scientific discovery, and their health and faculties, and therefore their happiness, have improved and increased immeasurably as a direct result of scientific investigation.
Science, however, has done far more than promote health and longevity. In principle, the effect of the application of scientific discovery had been to improve man’s whole way of life by allowing him to use the world’s natural resources to the full. Simple machines and processes have now become complex and efficient through the application of technology — another product of scientific technology — another product of scientific research — and a further by-product has been the increase of wealth, and therefore purchasing power both to the community and the individual. Without science and its application, there would be no roads, no transport, no street-lighting, no permanent buildings, railways, aircraft, or shipping; no radio, cinema, or television; no books or newspapers. Man’s existence would, in fact, be at the bare subsistence level. He would be wholly preoccupied with finding enough to eat and defending himself from wild animals. Like that of the cavemen, his life would be ‘nasty, short and brutish’. But science had done even more. The urge to travel and explore the world, and to develop its natural resources has been well served by science during the past five years. Today, science has begun to unravel the mysteries of the universe. Tomorrow, who knows? In any event, knowledge leading to ‘know-how’ is man’s only means of satisfying his natural instinct to understand and dominate nature, because, although physically one of the weakest of the animals, mentally and psychologically, he is a giant in comparison with all other known forms of creation.
Yet today, something has to be said on the other side. The old proverb ‘knowledge is power has more truth about it than ever before, and in many advanced countries, we are reaching the position where the real power has fallen into the hands of nuclear scientists who possess the means of wholesale destruction. Such brain power often goes together with psychological immaturity and childish dreams of an ‘international society’ in which all knowledge should be pooled. Such idealism, noble in the abstract, is dangerous in an imperfect world, particularly, when scientists reveal potentially dangerous secrets or defect from one political block to another. Today, science is indeed the enemy of man in this sense.
Further considerations are the fact that science has made warfare easy for the unscrupulous. Any small or vindictive nation can purchase jet aircraft, poison gas, or high-velocity rifle. And some of the more general results of science are also somewhat disquieting. Crop fertilizers taint the crops. Tampering with nature can produce imbalance or drought. But perhaps, the most important danger is that science seems to be gaining control over the man himself, as it has produced what we call ‘modern life,’ with all its nervous tension, ceaseless activity, worry, and unbalanced living. City-dwellers tend to curse the machine like the computer which has forced them into a rigid pattern of restricted, high-pressure, and yet monotonous living. Charlie Chaplin’s old film ‘Modern Times’ effectively satirized this tendency some forty years ago and, for most of us, life has developed along with the lines he predicted.
Science, however, is neither man’s enemy nor his friend. Like the jungle, it is neutral. everything depends on man’s use or misuse of it. Today’s signs are that its worst dangers are at least being recognized, and there is hope for the future, provided science is made man’s servant and not his master.
