What will Einsteins dream about, or the Middle Ages 2.0

Now, especially in connection with the Chelyabinsk event, they are actively discussing what global troubles threaten humanity. Recall about one such danger that is not directly related to either asteroids or with a nuclear war.

We live in technical civilization. In her development, she herself creates problems that can be solved only by moving on. Antibiotics can serve as a certain indicative example. Bacteria adapt to the current generation of drugs, but there is the next generation in the reserve. It will be bad if new drugs do not appear.

The famous lines of Dmitry Prigov are no longer applicable to the life of earthlings, apparently, since the 19th century. If the “thoughts of the sky” understand the fundamental natural sciences, then practice shows the effectiveness of such thoughts for the national economy, at least in the future.

The crop increased
There will be more bread
There will be more time
Talk about the sky
There will be more time
Talk about the sky
The crop will decrease
Less will become bread

Technical progress (which relate to new medical achievements) has the basis - scientific progress. The development of a new device or technological process is based on scientific discoveries, which themselves were made more from the desire to learn something new, “tore secrets from nature”, and not in order to give the basis for the appearance of another gadget. Scientific discoveries will end-after some time, fundamentally new technical devices will cease to appear. A new Middle Ages will come.

However, from the Middle Ages 1.0 the new will be distinguished by an abundance of problems generated by the development of technology and unbridled consumption and are by -products of rapid technical development. This is a significant danger to the world, as we know it. To avoid it, it is necessary that the flow of scientific discoveries does not run out.

The reasons why gradually can be less discoveries is a lot. Some of them may seem quite hypothetical, however, it is worth listing them. The most incredible: the world is arranged too simple, and in fact, we will quickly find out all the basic laws, and then small details and clarifications will remain (for example, Vladimir Lipunov wrote about this danger twenty years ago). It seems, however, that we are far from such a state of omniscience.

The non -trivial opportunity is that the best minds of mankind over time will switch to other activities, so there will be no one to make new scientific breakthroughs. This is in positive feedback with the pace of discoveries. For example, if, as it happens in accelerating physics, a new large, complex and super -expensive device will be required for the next breakthrough, the creation of which takes decades, then researchers can prefer other, more interesting areas of the study, where discoveries (or simply tests of hypotheses) should not wait for so long. In the event that the situation becomes typical of all natural sciences, potential einsteins may stop dreaming of science and prefer to play the violin, engage in politics or philosophy, which will not be able to give impetus to the technical developments necessary to solve human problems.

Another danger is that science is becoming more extensive and complex. Both knowledge and the number of scientific disciplines are growing. Specialists are becoming increasingly narrow. It becomes more and more difficult to engage in the synthesis of scientific knowledge, interdisciplinary works. In a sense, the world can be too complicated for us, for the human brain. Then, in the end, science awaits degeneration. There can be many scientists, but there will be no significant achievements, and this, as experience shows, leads to the devaluation of the work of scientists. In particular, there will be more pseudo -nouns and other negativity associated with the inability to separate sheep from goats. This potentially seems overcoming if we learn to expand our intellectual capabilities. But for this, again, new technical solutions are needed, for which there is no scientific base yet. After all, it would be great to introduce a chip into the head to expand and improve memory, or make it possible to “google” with an effort of thought, but we do not even know how to do it. What can we say about the strengthening of analysis abilities!

What is the guide to action? If we do not have a good “B” plan by changing the nature of civilization (i.e., for the care of the technical civilization of mass consumption, not towards wildness, but towards something acceptable), then humanity should take care of further scientific progress. That is, despite some stagnation in some fields of research, it is worth trying to break further, even by large costs of resources. Although science sometimes seems expensive, nevertheless, the expenses for it are interest on national budgets even in the most advanced countries, and really fundamental studies are very crumbs (fundamental and applied research, and even military developments often combine in the budget line!). And the future depends significantly on what we will know about nature in order to be able to save us from ourselves.

It is important to understand that the relationship of science and technology is not always linear: opened - applied. The process of the development of science itself is also significant, during which inappropriate discoveries may appear. But without them, the development of science will be impossible, which has its own internal logic. We cut them off as useless, there will be no others - directly in demand in applied areas. For example, simply because scientists will not be interesting without them. Therefore, you should not excessively ask the question: "How to apply Higgs Bozon in the national economy?" “And blame scientists that they spent billions on something useless in everyday life.” Who knew that the search for W and Z Bozonov would end up with the Internet, and the search for (not open) radio signals from the evaporating black holes predicted by the hoking - WiFi.

Sergey Popov,
doct. physical. Sciences, V.N.S. GAISH MSU