How to Make Science Truly Limitless

How to Make Science Truly Limitless

By: Rohit Patel


    Do you remember hearing about the scientific discoveries that occurred as a kid in your history class? It started with the scientific revolution, then proceeded to the Industrial Revolution, and ever since there has been a surge of scientific discoveries. There was the creation of the microscope, the discovery of the cell, the theory of special relativity, the Haber process, and more. There were so many discoveries, all happening at a fast rate. However, this trend started to change. The rate of scientific discoveries in these fields of biology, chemistry, and physics has been slowing down. There were fewer discoveries from more recent times being added to school textbooks. So, what happened?

    You would think that if we invested more in science, the rate of scientific discoveries would increase. This could be because scientists can afford the most advanced technologies and collaborate with many scientists, all working toward the same goal. However, this wasn’t the case. Funding increased, as shown in a study alluded to in an essay titled “Science Is Getting Less Bang For Its Buck" by Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen. In this essay, data is brought up that demonstrates that from 1900 to the present, funding has an upward exponential trend. However, additional diagrams showing the trends of Nobel Prizewinning Discoveries in Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine have been going up and down. No upward trend corresponded with rises in funding from the 1900s to the 1980s. So why is this the case? 

    Don’t get me wrong, there still have been incredible discoveries that were made recently. The discovery of CRISPR and the advent of artificial intelligence have been making headlines. However, these discoveries can’t even scale the mountain of reputation that was acquired for discoveries of the neutron or the cell. There were many answers to the question of the slow progress in science, but the authors Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen brought up the idea of perspective. 

    The analogy of exploring a new land does a good job of explaining this concept of perspective. When someone first visits a new land, everything is brand new to the explorers. You don’t know where anything is, and it is on you to explore the fruit that this new land has. After exploring the new land for a long time, you get a better sense of what there is, and the amount of unknown information becomes less and less. The science field is trying to “fill the map,” as the authors Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen put it. 

    We can change this outcome if we approach science in a different light. Instead of taking what is already given and trying to fill the gaps in knowledge, we should branch out. The authors Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen mention, “It’s one thing to have equations describing the way a single molecule of water behaves. It’s quite another to understand why rainbows form in the sky, the crashing of ocean waves, or the origins of the dirty snowballs in space that we call comets”. 

    The authors are trying to say here that instead of trying to solve questions regarding one molecule of water, we should examine it differently. Why do rainbows form? Why do the waves of oceans crash, and where do comets come from? All these questions deal with water; however are reformatted in a way that brings new approaches to scientific concepts, which takes science in a different direction. We were able to take a limited concept and create nearly infinite opportunities out of it. 


    By taking this approach, we can increase the number of scientific discoveries made, given the increased budget. 



Works Cited


           Patrick Collison, Michael Nielsen. “Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 28 Nov. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/diminishing-returns-science/575665/. 


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