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What does science have in store for us in the next century? We asked that question to one of the foremost scientists of our time. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. E.O.Wilson is a university research professor at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.
“In a deep sense, science is in the process of answering the great questions of philosophy, which professional philosophers abandoned a half century ago. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? And those were abandoned by philosophers as essentially unanswerable – but now scientists snuffling along, being mainly concerned with discovery, have begun to answer them with what can be called the three, advancing spearheads of scientific research: the assembly of cells and organisms at the molecular level; the assembly of the biosphere and the ecosystems of the biosphere, by the coming together of species and how these species are created; and finally, the nature of the mind explained by the working of the brain at the level of neurons and of circuitry. And added to this, the history of each of these through geologic time. This is what scientists are approaching in the major advances now under way in twenty-first century biology.”
Our thanks to professor E.O. Wilson.
To hear about our new CD, please visit pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.
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