Scientific Breakthroughs Ahead!

By Rick Docksai
Anthology offers a sneak preview into the next great wave of innovation.

What’s Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science. Edited by Max Brockman. Vintage Books. 2009. 237 pages. Paperback. $14.95.

Young scientists entering their fields today will grapple with perplexing questions that their elders have left behind. What’s Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science offers some of their answers.

Editor Max Brockman personally scouted out 18 of the most promising new researchers and solicited original articles from them. The resulting compilation promises to be “a representative who’s who of the coming generation of scientists.”

Here is a sampling of the questions tomorrow’s scientists are tackling.

In “Our Place in an Unnatural Universe,” Sean Carroll, senior research associate in physics at Caltech, emphasizes how little we know about the universe. We know that it is expanding, but not what is propelling the expansion. Nor can we explain how the universe arrived at its present-day shape. We think that it began as a super-dense, super-hot ball that exploded in a “big bang” — but how did it coalesce into a ball in the first place? We cannot conclusively answer these questions, says Carroll. We can only postulate ideas. It is a matter of trying to make the most sense of the universe that we can.

Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard cognitive neuroscientist, hopes that we will transcend the limits of our moral instincts. In “Fruit Flies of the Moral Mind,” he argues that moral judgment is a complex interplay between intuitive emotional responses and more effortful cognitive processes. Each is controlled by a separate set of brain systems. When we puzzle over moral dilemmas, these neural systems compete; the dissonance between the two is what we know as anguish. This tension may underlie recent debates over stem-cell research, torturing of suspected terrorists, and other issues. Greene concludes that neither brain system is fully prepared to process the increasingly complicated moral decisions that modern life deals us.

Katerina Harvati, now with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, discusses species extinction in “Extinction and the Evolution of Humankind.” Most of the species that ever lived on earth are now extinct, she points out. The human fossil record has two extinctions: Paranthropus, which disappeared a million years ago, and Neanderthalis, which died out 30,000 years ago.

Harvati observes that our species, Homo sapiens, benefited from a varied diet, long life span, adaptability to harsh environments, and ability to spread to diffuse geographic areas quickly. However, our recent activity strains ecosystems considerably, so we must adapt again to the new challenges of climate change and environmental degradation.

What enabled Homo sapiens to evolve into civilized humans? In “Out of Our Minds,” Hominid Psychology Research Group researcher Vanessa Woods and Duke University anthropologist Brian Hare conclude that it was this species’ unique aptitude for cooperation and tolerance. Early humans learned to solve problems by communicating with each other and by cooperating both with strangers and with tribe members they did not personally like. Chimpanzees, by contrast, have nothing to do with those who are not their companions or kin. Some apes are comparatively more humanlike, though, such as the bonobos. We should study them intensively, Woods and Hare conclude; it might be crucial to understanding ourselves.

Other subjects covered in the collection include:

* The nature and effects of dark energy, according to Stephon H.S. Alexander, Haverford College physicist.
* The mind of the adolescent, according to Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, research fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neursocience, University College in London.
* The role of viruses in the planet’s equilibrium, according to Nathan Wolfe, Stanford University biologist.
* Prospects for human enhancement, according to Oxford University bioethicist Nick Bostrom.
* The effects of specialization on scientific output, according to Gavin Schmidt, climatologist with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The volume’s 18 authors speak excitedly about the gaps in what we know and the prospects for filling them. They also evince keen hope that, as our species learns more, it might grow toward greater health, awareness, and sustainability. Readers will be inspired by these authors’ accounts and what directions they might take science, and the global community along with it, in the decades ahead.

About the Reviewer
Rick Docksai is a staff editor for THE FUTURIST.