One thing that fractals seem to tell us
is that there seems to be beauty "built in"
to the universe
( they come from natural mathematical laws).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1980978,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1
No religion and an end to war: how thinkers see the future
Alok Jha, science correspondent
Monday January 1, 2007
The Guardian
People's fascination for religion and superstition will disappear within
a few decades as television and the internet make it easier to get
information, and scientists get closer to discovering a final theory of
everything, leading thinkers argue today.
The web magazine Edge (www.edge.org) asked more than 150 scientists and
intellectuals: "What are you optimistic about?" Answers included hope
for an extended human life span, a bright future for autistic children,
and an end to violent conflicts around the world.
Philosopher Daniel Denett believes that within 25 years religion will
command little of the awe it seems to instil today. The spread of
information through the internet and mobile phones will "gently,
irresistibly, undermine the mindsets requisite for religious fanaticism
and intolerance".
Biologist Richard Dawkins said that physicists would give religion
another problem: a theory of everything that would complete Albert
Einstein's dream of unifying the fundamental laws of physics. "This
final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue death blow to
religion and other juvenile superstitions."
Part of that final theory will be formulated by scientists working on
the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator at Cern in Geneva,
which is to be switched on this year. It will smash protons together to
help scientists understand what makes up the most fundamental bits of
the universe.
Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University, highlighted the
decline of violence: "Most people, sickened by the bloody history of the
20th century, find this claim incredible. Yet, as far as I know, every
systematic attempt to do***ent the prevalence of violence over centuries
and millennia (and, for that matter, the past 50 years), particularly in
the west, has shown the overall trend is downward."
John Horgan, of the Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, was
optimistic "that one day war - large-scale, organised group violence -
will end once and for all".
This will also be the year that we get to grips with our genomes. George
Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, believes we will learn
"so much more about ourselves and how we interact with our environment
and fellow humans".
Simon Baron-Cohen, a psychologist at Cambridge University, focused on
autistic children, saying their outlook had never been better. "There is
a remarkably good fit between the autistic mind and the digital age," he
said. "Many develop an intuitive understanding of computers, in the same
way other children develop an intuitive understanding of people."
Leo Chalupa, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Davis,
predicted that, by the middle of this century, it would not be uncommon
for people to lead active lives well beyond the age of 100. He added:
"We will be able to regenerate parts of the brain that have been worn
out. So better start thinking what you'll be doing with all those extra
years."
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