Human innovation is notoriously unpredictable, as even the most sweeping glance at recent history reveals. In 1937 the United States Academy of Sciences undertook a study to for President Roosevelt to attempt to predict the major scientific breakthroughs that would take place in only the next one hundred years. They predicted developments in agriculture, synthetic rubber and (wrongly), synthetic petroleum that would remove the need for heavy consumption of the world’s oil resources. However they did not foresee the event of mankind in space, the development of antibiotics, transatlantic flights and atomic energy, to name but a few examples. Did they have any chance of predicting upcoming developments accurately at all?
Attempts to Predict Development
In fact, in most such attempts at the prediction of future scientific development more tends to be missed or dismissed as unimportant by prominent figures of the time than successfully noted as the way forward. From the Spanish Royal Commission’s rejection of Christopher Columbus’ proposal to sail west, citing that “So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value,’” to Lord Kelvin’s 1900 assertion that “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement,” it is evidently a poor idea to at any point try to limit the size of the unknown.
A senior school Greek grammar teacher once angrily told a student, “Nothing will ever become of you!” The teacher’s name was Joseph Degenhart, and his student was a young Albert Einstein. Clearly his ability to detect potential innovation was somewhat lacking, but it is unlikely he is the only teacher in history to have dismissed a seemingly worthless student who later went on to greatness – or who might have done so if given appropriate encouragement.
Accidental Discoveries
The famous “accident” is a key player in many scientific developments, which can undermine any and all human forecasting attempts. X-Rays were discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen during a cathode ray experiment when he thought an unexpected glow in his laboratory was the result of a tear in a cardboard tube; in 1901 he won a Nobel Prize for this discovery. Perhaps the most famous accidental development is the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by one Alexander Fleming, who during his study of influenza noticed that one of his Petri dishes was covered with mould.
Other, less celebrated but no less useful inventions have also been the product of chance circumstances. George de Mestral would never have developed Velcro if he hadn’t noticed his dog covered in cockleburs. Harry Coover managed the unusual feat of accidentally developing Superglue twice, once looking for a way to develop optically clear plastic and again nine years later trying to produce a heat resistant polymer for jet canopies.
Accidental Setbacks
The proverbial Lady Luck has set back, or set on a completely different course, just as many developments as she has assisted, further contributing to the sometimes seemingly random progress of human scientific endeavour. Arthur Eddington, who made it his life’s work to deduce all the laws and constants of nature through pure thought, died in 1944 from stomach cancer, aged sixty-two, with his great task uncompleted. Henri Becquerel might have taken a good deal longer to discover the phenomenon of radioactivity, if he did at all, if it had not been for the overcast sky in Paris on the 26th February 1896 causing his original photographic plate experiment to be unworkable.
Genius Ignored or Dismissed
Just as easily, revolutionary discoveries may be made but not publicised, or if they are publicised given little credit. Einstein’s verdict on quantum mechanics was the famously dismissive assertion that he did not believe God played dice (“…that He plays dice…is something I cannot believe for a single moment”). Even Newton’s Principia Mathematica experienced significant delays between its completion and publication due to ongoing arguments between Newton and the equally notable experimentalist Robert Hooke.
The Futility of Prediction
All of these chance factors, major or minor, have in one way or another affected the rate of development of various scientific efforts. And since chance, like the quantum mechanics Einstein so despised, is largely unpredictable in its manifestations toward human enterprise, the clear importance of these many accidents along the route of progress indicates quite definitively the futility of any attempt to predict human scientific development.
Resources
"The End of Science" by William Beaty online at Science Hobbyist accessed 22/02/10.
E=mc2 by David Bodanis, page 6 (Pan Books, 2001 edition)
"Top Ten Accidental Inventions" on the Science Channel accessed 22/02/10.
The Constants of Nature by John D. Barrow, page 84 (Vintage, 2003 edition)
The Magic Furnace by Marcus Chown, page 23 (Vintage, 2000 edition)
Page 191, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (Black Swan, 2004 edition)
