Without science there is no human growth, no technological advances, no knowledge generation and the world stagnates. Science is knowledge and without an investment in science the world as we know it would not be possible. You must be logged in to post a comment. Skip to content. Unfortunately, sometimes we fail to appreciate how many years of basic research have gone into keeping us relatively healthy throughout our daily lives, and into the different technologies that make our lives so much easier.
Without science the world would stop. When the British Medical Journal asked a group of experts and readers what the greatest scientific advancement in the last years was, the answer wasn't open-heart surgery or the find-my-phone app on smartphones.
Beating out antibiotics and anesthesia , the majority chose advancements in sanitation [source: Katz ].
The discovery that proper disposal of urine and feces could save lives wasn't so long ago. It was in Victorian England, where the Thames was glutted with waste and sewage overflowed in the streets, that former journalist and lawyer Edwin Chadwick decided that an ounce of sanitary prevention was certainly worth the cure of typhus, cholera, influenza and many other nasty germs that came with exposure to sewage.
Chadwick drafted plans for hydraulic sewage systems and drainage pumps to remove waste one of those pathways led directly to the Thames.
Of course, proper sewage disposal is still not present globally, and with great consequences: One billion people — 15 percent of the world's population -- still practice open defecation, and 2. Speaking of contaminated water, drinking the stuff can lead to a miserable bout of stomach pain and loose bowels, as many of us who've traveled in the developing world can attest. But water-related illnesses do more than just ruin trips.
As the World Health Organization reported in , such diseases are the world's leading cause of death , claiming 3. Children in impoverished countries, whose immune systems already are weakened by malnutrition and other stresses, are particularly at risk [source: VOA].
It used to be even worse. For centuries, even in developed countries, mysterious, periodic outbreaks of water-borne cholera regularly killed many thousands of people [source: Encyclopaedia Britannica ]. During a cholera outbreak in , British scientist John Snow determined that the disease was caused by microorganisms in sewage that contaminated the water supply.
Among other pioneering public health ideas, he came up with the suggestion to apply chlorine to the water to kill the microorganisms, and the illness rate plummeted.
Since then, additional chemical and filtration technologies have been developed to make our drinking water much safer [source: Lenntech ]. We don't know the identity of the experimenter or experimenters in the Acheulian culture in Africa who discovered how to start, control and use fire about , years ago. But their mastery of rapid oxidation was one of the most important developments that sustained the survival and spread of humanity, according to Nira Alperson-Afil, a member of an Israeli archaeological team that found the earliest evidence of human ability to make and control fire at will [source: Hebrew University of Jerusalem ].
The invention equipped early humans with a scary deterrent -- flaming torches -- to protect them and their vulnerable young from predators. It also provided a source of warmth that helped them to survive temperature downturns. In addition, the ability to cook animal flesh and vegetation increased food choices for humans and helped them to avoid malnutrition.
Perhaps more than any other invention, fire was the breakthrough that enabled humans to multiply and spread across the planet's surface. Today, we've progressed beyond gathering around the campfire and gnawing hunks of charred mammoth haunches, but the ability to burn fuel remains a crucial part of our continued existence.
If we didn't have farms to produce food for us, we'd all have to spend much of our time gathering wild plants and stalking animals to survive, the way primitive hunter-gatherers did thousands of years ago.
Hunting and gathering isn't necessarily a bad way to go. For example, its inherent flexibility enables humans to use the available resources in a range of habitats efficiently, and it doesn't deplete the ecosystem the way modern civilization does [source: Washington State University]. But it would require us to continually be on the move and limit ourselves to relatively small groups.
Contemporary civilization -- from standing militaries to factories to shopping malls -- would be impractical. That's why the development of agriculture is so important to our survival. Agriculture really is not one, but a series, of scientific and technical breakthroughs -- such as the development of irrigation technologies , and the invention of crop rotation and fertilizers -- that occurred over thousands of years. But it all started when humans figured out how to gather seeds from wild plants, plant and tend them, and harvest them.
According to DNA analysis of modern foodstuffs, development of the "founder crops" -- wheat, barley, chickpeas, lentils, flax and others -- dates back about 9, to 10, years in southwest Asia [source: Harris ]. Through global warming , caused by activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, humans have raised the average global temperature by about 1.
Earth, therefore, would have been at least that much cooler without us. A study published in Nature concluded that human-caused warming will postpone an upcoming ice age by at least , years.
It wasn't due for another 50, years, though, even without the human delay, so it's unlikely that Earth would be in the midst of another ice age today if we weren't around. Modern humans Homo sapiens as we are today were not always the only hominins on the block, and removing us from the equation might have opened the door for our Neanderthal cousins.
Scientists aren't sure why Neanderthals went extinct around 40, years ago, but because they interbred with H. There were likely multiple reasons for Neanderthals' demise, but we are a main suspect. Chris Stringer, a professor and research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, thinks competition for resources was a factor in Neanderthals' disappearance. Related: What if Neanderthals had not gone extinct? According to Stringer, Neanderthals were leading complex lives in Europe, similar to modern humans, but they had difficulty coping with climate changes and were relatively few in number, with low genetic diversity.
This is bad news for any species, as it's a sign of inbreeding and ill health. Neanderthals were likely "already in trouble, and when modern humans got there as well, I think that may have been what tipped them over the edge," Stringer said.
But it wasn't just Neanderthals that humans may have held back. Scientists are still learning about at least one more human lineage that lived around the same time as modern humans and Neanderthals: the Denisovans. This lineage appears to be closer to Neanderthals than modern humans in genes and appearance, but is distinguishable from Neanderthals by its very large molars. Humans likely interbred with Denisovans as there is evidence of Denisovan DNA in present-day humans living in places such as New Guinea in Oceania — a finding that indicates Denisovans were in Southeast Asia interacting with the ancestors of modern humans that later settled further east, according to a study published in journal Science.
Time and time again, we hear scientists tell us that it is curiosity that underpins science. Indeed it does! Tyson puts it. A scientist is above all curious. A scientist asks questions and looks for an explanation, whether it has been discovered yet or not.
A scientist looks to enrich the knowledge of others with his or her discoveries. In a sense, a scientist is much like any other person, be they a philosopher, an artist, an economist or a writer.
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