Shobhit Mahajan - An Infinity of Questions
In May, 1543, as the Polish polymath Nicolaus Copernicus lay on his deathbed, he
was presented with the printed version of his magnum opus, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. With this work, Copernicus managed to not just
overturn centuries’ old dogma regarding the structure of the cosmos, but also
relegated human beings from the centre of the Universe to an insignificant
corner. The beginning of what is called the Scientific Revolution can also be
dated to the publication of this important work which proposed a heliocentric
instead of a geocentric world.
The Scientific Revolution is when we take
science as we now know it to begin. Bacon, Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey, Boyle,
Hooke and Newton were amongst the pioneers of this new approach to
understanding nature- an approach which placed experimentation and mathematical
formulation at its heart while also adopting a mechanistic view of nature.
Institutions like the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences also
played an important role especially during the Enlightenment which followed
this period.
The paradigm shift in the study of nature
ultimately led to the development of more efficient machines and instruments
and the Industrial Revolution. Better instruments led to new discoveries which
helped resolve many issues in science. At the dawn of the 20th century, science had assumed a hegemonic role hitherto the privilege of
religion in understanding and ordering the cosmos- Darwin had a solution for
our origins, Maxwell had solved the mystery of light with his electromagnetic
theory, Dalton’s atomic theory had proved successful in understanding matter at
the smallest scales and Koch and Pasteur had made significant advances in our
understanding of the causes and prevention of disease.
In 1900, Lord Kelvin is reported to have
said that there is nothing new left to be discovered in physics and all that
remains is more and more precise measurement. This hubristic confidence of the
scientists was obviously misplaced. As more and more experimental and
observational evidence came along, it was clear that Nature had many more
mysteries in its fold which needed to be solved.
Our understanding of the very
large, namely the cosmos was clearly incomplete. On the other hand, the very
small, that is the atomic domain, also posed a challenge to understanding
within the framework of existing theories. Similarly, though much was known
about the human body, medicine was still at a point where people had a higher
chance of dying if they went to a doctor than otherwise. Of course, an
understanding of life at the most fundamental level was completely missing at
this stage. Finally, even though
agricultural production had increased in the last few centuries because of
technology, it was entering a plateau with stagnant productivity leading to a
fear of a Malthusian catastrophe.
Start with the very large. Although, the
observations of Brahe and Kepler, together with the theoretical framework
provided by Newtonian physics, seemed to explain the motions of heavenly
objects, new observations of the cosmos needed to be explained. In particular,
astronomers found a huge number of galaxies, apart from our own Milky Way, in
the universe. Some of these galaxies exhibited peculiar properties which needed
explanation. As it turned out, in the second decade of the 20th century, Albert Einstein developed what has been called the most beautiful
theory in physics- the general theory of relativity which provided an alternative
view of gravity. Einstein’s theory was a new way of looking at the universe
where gravity was a property of the space-time itself. This led to the
development of cosmological models which attempted to explain the observations which were
accumulating at a rapid pace because of development of better instruments.
Interestingly, Einstein’s theory reduced to
the more familiar Newtonian theory for most of the cases
of interest. Thus, the
motion of the planets in the solar system could still be well explained with
Newtonian theory as would the calculation of the path of rockets and
satellites. It was only in extreme cases
of intense gravity that Einstein’s theory would really be tested. Unfortunately,
these were not amenable to our instruments for almost a century because the
effect is extremely small. And then in 1974, two astronomers discovered a star
system called a binary (where two stars are orbiting each other, the most
familiar binary being the dog star or
Sirius) populated by a particular kind
of star called pulsar. The pulsars orbiting each other were getting closer to
each other in exactly the way that Einstein’s theory predicted.
The most spectacular confirmation of the
theory however came in 2016 when a multinational collaboration, LIGO detected
gravitational waves which are predicted by Einstein’s theory. The extremely
sensitive instruments detected the passingof a gravitational wave produced when
two black holes collided some 1.3 billion years ago and a part of the energy
was emitted in the form of these waves.
Although Einstein’s theory has been
verified, our understanding of the cosmos is still terribly incomplete. We
don’t know if there are other universes
apart from our own. We know for instance that black holes exist but their exact
nature is still a mystery. And as it turns out, we don’t actually know what
exactly the universe is made of!
Our understanding of the very small
similarly underwent a radical change in the first few decades of the previous
century. The quantum theory formulated by Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac and
Schrödinger among others seemed to not only explain the nature of matter but
also could in principle account for all of chemistry. Over the next 7 decades,
more detailed theories of the structure of matter were formulated, culminating
in the so called Standard Model of Particle Physics. This model, populated with exotic sounding
particles like truth and beauty quarks, seemed to agree very well with the observations.
By the turn of the century, there was a general consensus that our
understanding of the very small was pretty satisfactory. Interestingly, an essential ingredient in the
theory was a mysterious particle called the Higgs boson which remained elusive
despite many efforts to detect it.
All this changed in 2013 when agargantuan
particle accelerator appropriately called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) found
the particle thereby confirming what the scientists anyway believed to be true.
The so-called God particle seemed to have exactly the properties as demanded by
the theory. With the discovery of the Higgs particle, our understanding of the
microscopic world seemed almost complete. Almost, because a major gap existed
in the formulation of a truly universal theory.
This was the grand synthesis or the Holy
Grail- the fitting together of the two great intellectual achievements of the
20th century, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory. Although some
of the best minds, including Einstein himself, have struggled with trying to
unite these two theories, success has eluded them. Last few decades has seen
the emergence of highly mathematical and seemingly unphysical models called
String Theories. These theories are extremely elegant mathematically but don’t
seem to have any connection with the real world. Thus, at the most fundamental
level, our understanding of the very small, though vastly better than at any
time in our history, is still very much incomplete.
In the field of medicine too, the first few
years of the previous century marked a turning point. In 1928, the
serendipitous discovery of penicillin by Fleming has been responsible for
saving hundreds of millions of lives. This along with tremendous advances in
diagnostics, medicinal chemistry and vaccine technology has decreased morbidity
and mortality rates hugely. Major challenges still remain – the threat posed by
the emergence of new diseases like HIV Aids and Ebola, an exponential increase
in lifestyle diseases like diabetes and cardiac disease as well as effective
treatment of cancer to name a few. Important as these are, possibly the most serious threat to public health is the emergence of antibiotic resistant
microbes.
Over the last century, scientists have been
able to isolate a large number of antibiotics (mostly from soil bacteria it
turns out) which unfortunately have been used indiscriminately. The most
extensive use of antibiotics has been for growth promotion in livestock and
poultry. In a spectacular example of survival of the fittest, this has led to
an emergence of microbes which are resistant to all the known antibiotics.
Coupled with the fact that there are no new antibiotics in the drug pipeline
has led to scientists predicting a nightmare scenario where even a small cut
which becomes infected might be fatal
because of lack of effective pharmacological antidotes. The situation is so
alarming that the United Nations had called a special session to discuss
possible solutions in September 2016.
In biology too, there had been steady progress,
though the big discovery came only in the middle of the century. In 1953, the
molecular structure of the DNA was identified and over the next few decades,
the essential basis of life at the molecular level had been fairly well
understood. The fitting together of molecular biology, that is the
understanding of the molecular components of life and theory of evolution led
to what is called modern evolutionary synthesis.
The 1970s saw the birth of recombinant DNA
technology which opened up the field of biotechnology. Tools like Polymerase
Chain Reaction (PCR) allowed scientists to greatly speed up genetic analysis
and soon whole genomes of several species were being sequenced. The ambitious
Human Genome Project started in 1988 was the watershed movement in humanity’s
quest to understand itself. Rapid sequencing techniques developed subsequently
along with an exponential increase in computing power have made sequencing the
human genome extremely inexpensive and
quick.
As the technology to manipulate genes
evolved, the biotechnology industry boomed with many applications in
agriculture, pharmacology and even industry. Pest resistant plants, medicinal
agents manufactured by genetically modified bacteria and even bacteria to clean
up chemical spills are all part of our post-industrial world today. In 1996, the
first mammal to be cloned, the sheep Dolly gained worldwide fame though it also
evoked fears of the technology being misused as in the popular novel and film,
“The Boys from Brazil”.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in genetic
engineering came in 2012 with the advent of a technique called CRISPR. This
enormously significant advance has applications in many areas including genome
engineering and medicine. It has also made possible selective editing of any
genome including the human genome. The easy and cheap availability of these
tools has provoked a lot of discussion among the scientists on the ethics of
tampering with the human genome.
Despite the stupendous progress in our
understanding of biological systems, we are still nowhere near answering
several fundamental questions. We are, for instance, still not certain about
how life began from a chemical soup some 4 billion years ago. The essential
question of what is consciousness and how does it relate to our biological
makeup is still open as is the conundrum of how a minute difference in the
genetic makeup between humans and chimpanzees lead to us being what we are.
Some 10-12000 years ago, somewhere in the
Levant, a bunch of hunter gatherers realised that they could domesticate wild
grass and have a steady source of food. This Neolithic revolution ultimately
led to the growth of cities and civilizations. Ultimately, everything was
predicated on agriculture. Increasing the agricultural output for most of human
history was mostly a matter of bringing new land under cultivation. Of course
new technologies like selective breeding of plants, better implements etc.
played a vital role. However, by the beginning of the 20th century,
it was clear that our agricultural output will not be enough to sustain the
growing population. The soil fertility was being rapidly depleted and yields
were plateauing.
During the early years of the 20th century, Fritz Haber invented a technique to use atmospheric nitrogen to
manufacture ammonia cheaply and efficiently. This allowed the essentially
limitless nitrogen in the air to be used as fertilizer since ammonia is a
precursor for making fertilizer. The availability of nitrogenous fertilizers
allowed agricultural yields to increase dramatically and thus averted a
catastrophe. The advances in medicine
had resulted in a sharp decline in the mortality rates and hence a huge
increase in population. The development of high yielding varieties and
pesticides etc. also allowed grain yields to be sufficient to feed the rapidly
increasing population.
However, in recent years, fears of a
climate induced agricultural crisis are again looming large. Our planet is inexorably
getting warmer and this could lead to highly unusual weather phenomena. A sharp
dip in agricultural production could easily result because of these factors.
Increasing yields by increased use of fertilizers is no longer sufficient.
Instead, scientists are trying to replicate nature and use genetic engineering
to increase cereal yields.
Photosynthesis or the process of turning
water, carbon dioxide and sunlight into food is how we humans get all our food
ultimately. It turns out that, depending on the specific chemical reaction,
there are two kinds of photosynthesis, C3 and C4 type. C3 type is less suited to
thrive in hot and dry areas than C4 plants. They are also less efficient in
converting energy into food than C4 plants.
Unfortunately, the most important cereals, rice and barley are C3 while
maize and sugarcane are C4.
An important project underway is to use
genetic engineering to see if genes responsible for C4 photosynthesis can be
incorporated into the most widely grown varieties of rice. This will not only
improve the food content of rice but also make possible its cultivation in more
extreme conditions. If this is successful, it will prove to be as important a
development in agriculture as the Haber process was in the previous century.
That science (and the derivative
technologies) has made immense progress in the last 100 years is of course
incontrovertible. Nevertheless, there are manyfundamental questions which
science has not been able to answer. Thus for instance, the nature of time itself
is a bit of a mystery as yet. Is our
universe the only universe that exists or are there multiple universes which we
cannot access? Why does matter exist at all given that the early universe
started off with equal quantities of matter and antimatter, which should have
annihilated each other long ago? Of
course, scientists like to believe that it is only a matter of time before
these mysteries would be solved.
However,
nature has recently stuck a final nail in the coffin of anthropic supremacists.
At the turn of the new millennium,
observations of a particular kind of heavenly object called Supernova showed
that ordinary matter, the stuff which we and our iPhones are made of, is only
4% of the total matter in the universe. The other 96% is a combination of mysterious
stuff called dark matter and dark energy about which we know almost nothing.
Thus, not only are we not at the centre of the universe, we are not even made
of the stuff which most of the universe is made of.Copernicus would surely be
smiling in his grave!
See also
“March… Someone has walked across the snow,
Someone looking for he knows not what.”
The Old Astronomer to His Pupil
Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.
Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true,
And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.
But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles!
You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
