More Edge:
The prime task of 2003 and beyond is to re-define and re-discover the intellectual and moral roots of science. For science has become bound with wealth and power into a positive feedback loop from which it cannot escape: its perceived role in the present age is to provide high technologies of the kind that generate capital which in turn supports more science, of the kind that will provide high technologies to generate more capital and so on and so on. It becomes more and more difficult to finance science that offers no obvious short-term commercial or military reward. Worse: an entire generation of scientists and politicians has grown up that takes it to be self-evident that science should accept its role as the handmaiden of commerce and power.
Colin Tudge
Oxfordshire
Three-time winner of the Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award.
Author of The Time Before History
