Peter Jones

It’s science, not protest, that will save the planet

issue 21 December 2019

One might expect that the challenge of climate change would encourage many young people to take up Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects at A-level. Yet over the past ten years, with the exception of maths, numbers have risen only very slightly; and for ICT have dropped. Ancient attitudes to what then passed as ‘science’ may suggest a solution.

Ancient Greeks were scrupulous about one fundamental breakthrough that remains the cornerstone of all serious research: supernatural explanations were impermissible. The reason was that no human could know the mind of a god. This did not mean Greek ‘scientists’ did not acknowledge the gods; they simply took it as axiomatic that bringing gods into the equation rendered the conclusions valueless.

That said, the ancients did not understand, nor practise, science in the way that we do. The experimental method had not yet been invented, let alone the technology to explore at anything but surface level.

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