What's Next in Science?

Abstract

IT IS AN ALL TOO COMMON practice of scientific publicists and prognosticators to give free vent to their imaginations in a most unscientific way by picturing our descendants as flying through interplanetary space, after the manner of Buck Rogers or operating a navy with a thimbleful of transmuting atoms or banishing old age by administration of glandular extracts. No doubt many of the past triumphs of science were, relatively to the times, as spectacular and even more unexpected than these would be. However, scientific progress is not a great leap of imagination, but a steady process, like the advance of a great army; at times strategic positions are captured, as when the positive electron (positron) was discovered;at times there is a steady “mopping up” process all along the line, as when the systematic search for chemical isotopes followed the first discovery; at times there is retreat, as when a theory is proved untenable; at times a new powerful engine of this scientific war is invented, like the radio tube amplifier. While the scientific campaign is generally well planned in advance and directed toward certain main objectives, it also, on occasion, is opportunistic in that its center of activity may quickly be shifted by some new discovery or idea which discloses new territories to be conquered.