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Which science has best served humanity? (title fixed)
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07-08-2008 10:17am#1It's a question with no right answer but I wonder what other people think. From the start, let's just say that this is a bit of fun as well as being a bit serious so try not to get worked up if you don't agree with something
So I and millions of others are alive today simply because of advances in Biology (and therefore medicine). Infant mortality has plummeted and we all live longer thanks to Biology.
However, I can't help thinking that life would be tough without the advances in chemistry and materials science, we wouldn't have many of our cleaning products only for formulation scientists and the chemists who synthesised the chemicals in them, we also wouldn't have plastics for example, so my office chair might be made of wood and I could get splinters as it aged.
Speaking of office chairs, without maths, physics and computer science, I wouldn't be on this forum and would probably be bored a lot of the time.
So I ask you, what science, in your opinion has contributed most to humanity and why?0
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It's a question with no right answer but I wonder what other people think. From the start, let's just say that this is a bit of fun as well as being a bit serious so try not to get worked up if you don't agree with something
So I and millions of others are alive today simply because of advances in Biology (and therefore medicine). Infant mortality has plummeted and we all live longer thanks to Biology.
However, I can't help thinking that life would be tough without the advances in chemistry and materials science, we wouldn't have many of our cleaning products only for formulation scientists and the chemists who synthesised the chemicals in them, we also wouldn't have plastics for example, so my office chair might be made of wood and I could get splinters as it aged.
Speaking of office chairs, without maths, physics and computer science, I wouldn't be on this forum and would probably be bored a lot of the time.
So I ask you, what science, in your opinion has contributed most to humanity and why?
Many of the novel chemical entities that become medicines are synthesised by chemists rather than biologists. I still prefer biology though, since our knowledge is used to make all that stuff go.
My vote goes to the physicists who, if the Fear Brigade are correct, should be ending the world sometime in the next 24 hours by switching on the LHC.0 -
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I think Seamus's XKCD cartoon partly answers the question in that the are all so interrelated. In my opinion it is the application of the scientific method in simple cases which has benefited mankind the most e.g. John Snow and the Cholera outbreak in London (http://www.winwaed.com/sci/cholera/john_snow.shtml)
Science has codified the necessity of stepping back, thinking and theorising continuously refining and purely in human life term that has helped combat diseases and outbreaks purely from someone going "wait a minute these cases are not unrelated". I think I'm advocating medical research but not in a big pharma way but I'm not sure.
In another completely partisan reckoning I say Chemistry cause that's what my BA is in
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I don't care, using it in the manner you did after my warning isn't on.Rutherford's comment is one of the most famous quotations from the 20th century.
Rutherford banned from popular science: D
I have an interesting book called "Consciousness" at home that looks at the state of neuroscience today. Ironically, the recent experiment using rat neurons to 'power' a robot (see Guan Yin's thread) is a combination of physics and biology that may one day yield the very results we are looking for.If biology can explain "Consciousness" some day then Biology may yet have the last laugh.
Today more than ever it is harder to delineate the sciences, nanotechnology is one area where it's almost impossible at times to say where the biology ends and the physics begins. This is why we must look to the past to see if any science can be said to have contributed more than another.
It's a question as easily answered as "How long is a piece of string?" but worth hearing peoples take on it.0 -
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Anyway, Medical Science did the most "good" to ordinary people whereas Chemical Science did the most "bad".
Chemists invented TNT,Gelignite, Semtex, Agent Orange, Napalm etc .
The effects of which Medical Science tried to "undo".
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Its still alll chemistry though. The medicinal chemists that gave us vaccines and all the important drugs are still chemists just like those that gave us formulations, plactics and other important chemical discoveries.
Besides, physicists invented the atomic bomb. 0 -
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the atomic bomb had to happen though....Besides, physicists invented the atomic bomb.
and chemists also gave us nearly every illegal drug... but they also needed to happen..
i suppose we should be thankful for chemists seeing as they gave us fuel for transport electricity etc.. but then i suppose there'd be no need for it was it not for physicists though chemists did discover the materials needed to make such things.... hmmm ever increasing circles(sorry just wanted to include a carcass refrence there somewhere:))0
sorry couldn't help myself. 
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