The extinction of human being refers to the overall destruction of human being. From the above-mentioned analysis we can draw a definite conclusion, that is, from the view of external factors, taking the sun evolving into a red giant star as a sign, human being do not need to worry about that risk of overall destruction in several billion years. Thus, except the external threat, whether human being can be continuous reproduction in an endless succession depends on them. In addition, from the above-mentioned analysis we can also draw another definite conclusion, i.e. the force of extinguishing human being fully depends on the factor of science and technology. It is because only by relying on science and technology can human being is extinguished. Any other force doesn’t have the capacity to extinguish human being that is a dominate species and greatly intelligent.
Section I Necessary Occurrence of Annihilating Measure No.1
Philosophy Assumption
I. Inconceivability of Science and Technology
Development of science and technology is closely linked with history of human being themselves. When you turn up the pages of History of Science, you can find solid experience to identify these facts. The earliest achievement of science and technology in human history was the application and chipped stone tools and using fire. These primitive inventions were just the beginning of human history.
The ancestor of mankind has undergone hundreds of thousands of years’ development, during which, they have overcome numerous obstacles in the field of science and technology. During any period, human being experienced incomprehensible natural phenomenon, had a strong will to conquer nature and remake nature, also, hold nature in awe. The achievements created by science and technology are always unbelievable and imaginable. So many things, which have thought to be unchangeable from generation to generation, have been changed by human being. People even couldn’t believe even though some scientific and technological achievements have been fulfilled, even some scientists leading in this field had the some feelings. The reason for this is that the force of science and technology is so huge that far beyond the subjective imagination and experience.
In order to fully illustrate the inconceivability of science and technology, let me introduce several scientific and technological achievements which have exerted far-reaching influence on human beings, from which you will find that, some achievements are very magic, even from the perspective of today.
(I) Electricity, Electromagnetic wave and the Application
In 1844, the United States Congress established a telegraph circuit from Washington to Baltimore, which was the earliest that taking electricity as information media. 21st, May was the first day of opening of the telegraph circuit. Hearing that information between two places could be exchanged by a wire, people thought it was so amazing. The telegraph apparatus room was crowned by people ring upon ring. Curious people were discussing and betting that, telegraph was not faster than a good horse. At that time, national congress of the Democratic Party was held in Baltimore. The name list of the candidates for President has spread throughout Washington through telegraph. All the bystanders and American politics were astonished and could hardly believe.
It is screaming and ridiculous for us today to discuss that whether the telegraph is faster than a horse. The speed of electricity is almost the same as the speed of light, and is zillion times faster than a running horse. Besides, it is not limited by weather and topography and don’t need rest during intermission. But, at the beginning of 19th century, measures to pass on messages used by human being were horse, boat and two legs of themselves. Though signal fire could send messages, it could only transfer abstract war messages, not detailed contents. Because people have did that for generations, it was natural for them to bet whether telegraph was faster than a horse.
Because of the discovery of electricity, telegraph was put into application. Before making know of electricity and electric current, people could not break away the concept that transferring messages by the movement of animals and themselves. Let us just imagine from the perspective of that times, we could comprehensive this.
There is another thing that is as fast as electricity, i.e. electromagnetic wave. Today, even an ordinary middle school student can know a simple physics theory, i.e. electricity and magnetic can be interacted, from which electromagnetic wave can be produced. This is the basic knowledge of electromagnetics, a sub-discipline of physics. However, it was difficult to discover this regularity. At the early stage, it was nearly unanimously thought that, electricity is electricity; magnetic is magnetic, which are two totally irrelevant things. At the early 19th century, after philosophical thinking, Oersted believed that there is links between electricity and magnetic. After several experiments, in April 1820, he was the first to verify the magnetic action of electricity. In the following, Faraday verified that magnetic could induct electricity in laboratory, and put forward the Law of Electromagnetic Induction. After summarizing the electromagnetic theory, in 1864, Maxwell put forward the deduction that electromagnetic induction can produce electromagnetic wave, which was verified by a young scientist called Hertz later during his experiments. This is the early process of establishment of electromagnetic theory.
Discovery of electricity and establishment of electromagnetics have brought humans into an era of electric appliances. Due to the recognition for electromagnetic induction, electric generator and electric motor were invented, which enabled different kinds of circuits crisscross the country at present time. In the past, the only recognition for people to sky was wind, rain, snow or cloud and fog. But today, we know clearly that, there is a substance existing in the air anywhere, which can’t be seen and touched, but playing an important role, that is electromagnetic wave.
By virtue of electromagnetic wave, we can chat with our friends and family members thousands of miles away anytime and anywhere through mobile phone, just like talking face to face; when we turn on TV and see various entertainment programs and news, we see them just as the real things; we can carry out remote control on the earth for a space vehicle even it flies several billions of miles away and to the distant fringe of the solar system. But we take all these wonders in science and technology for granted.
However, just imagine, what should we feel about if we were back to 200 years ago?
We often see in science fiction films that men living in several years ago come to today’s world through a time tunnel. When they see the images in TV, they are frightened out of their wits and much curious just like see some ghosts and gods. It can be ascertained that, if living 200 years ago, most people can’t believe the reality in today’s world.
In fact, even we have fully understood the speculative knowledge about electricity and magnetic, we are amazing about the scientific and technical payoffs which are brought about by this knowledge.
In 1883, Edison found an interesting thing when he was developing light bulb. When sealing a sheet metal and lamp filament into a light bulb, there was electric current running through the lamp filament and sheet metal if positive voltage was applied to sheet metal; otherwise, there was no electric current. At the early 20th century, vacuum tube was invented on the basis of this research achievement. Diode can be used for detecting action, while triode can be used for amplifying signal.
The invention of vacuum tube created conditions for radio-communication and broadcasting, through which, people can receive radio signals by radio. Music and news can be transmitted in air through the form of electromagnetic wave. They can be broadcast through radio without using the electric wire, which is much better than wire line phone and telegraph.
Based on vacuum tube, scientists developed the first electronic computer at the end of 1945, which could carry out calculation as a substitute for human brain. It was palpable that what a wondrous thing replacing human brain by machine, more wondrous was that this machine was produced by human being, while its computing capacity was far better than any of the smartest person. The first computer was really a huge monster, with total of 18,000 vacuum tubes, weight of 30 tons, covering an area of over 170 square meters. It could operate 5000 times per second. During its 10 years of operation, calculation amount carried out by it was more than total amount of human brain in history. How many people would believe and understand this outstanding achievement before the invention of compute? However, after 60-odd years of today, when we looking back to see computers at early stage, we just can’t help but unanimously think that was just a primitive “department of pediatrics”
In the mid 20th century, transistor was invented by applying semiconductor materials. Transistor not only has the same performance as the vacuum tube, but also has some advantages such as small volume, light weight, long life span, and low cost, low energy consumption and without warm-up. So, vacuum tube was immediately replaced by transistor which was applied in the fields of radio and computer at once. The application of semiconductor materials has undergone three stages, that is, from transistor to integrated circuit to large-scale integrated circuit. A vacuum tube was as large as half of a fist, while the earliest transistor was as small as a rice grains. Later, integrated circuit was formed by combining electronic devices and components and electronic circuit on a chip. At the beginning, an integrated circuit composed several transistors on one piece of chip. With the improvement of techniques, today, a small piece of integrated circuit can contain millions of or even hundreds of millions of transistors.
It was a revolutionary event that replacing vacuum tube by transistor in the field of radio and computer, which has fundamentally improved the performance and features of products. For example, a radio applying vacuum tube was as large as a case, while today’s radio is just smaller than a matchbox. The first computer we have said before occupied several rooms. In 1996, in order to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the invention of the first computer, the University of Pennsylvania in U.S. fully copied the computing performance of the first computer in one piece of chip, which was only 7.44×5.29 square millimeters, even smaller than fingernail of the little finger. But it has integrated 174,569 transistors and had the same computing performance as that of the first computer with weight of 30 tons.
Just 60-year development, at present, computing speed of a giant computer exceeds trillions times per second, that is to say, just for one hour, calculation amount of it will exceed total calculation amount of human brain in history. Could People in hundreds of years before, or thousands of years before imagine this great scientific and technological achievement?
(II) Cognitive Process for Nuclear Energy
At present time, the most powerful force of nature that can be mobilized by human being is nuclear energy. Today, we have made enough cognition for nuclear energy. We can use it to manufacture weapons with annihilating power and to generate electricity. We are not surprised at the fact that a teensy of substance can hold so tremendous amounts of energy. However, it was not at all as 60-year ago.
The cognitive process for nuclear energy fully reflected the inconceivability of science and technology, meanwhile, it showed the limitation of cognition for the mighty power of science and technology, and even the most outstanding scientists lack enough cognition for the mighty power of science and technology in his research area.
The mass energy formula E=MC2 was put forward by Einstein in 1905. At that time, people, even those who believed it was correct, thought it was just a pure theoretical equation and without any utility value. Even though people have realized that what fixed stars like the sun burned was nuclear energy at that time, they thought the gate opening to this energy was so heavy that could only be opened by the power of space objects.
Cognition for elementary particle experienced a long and erroneous process. Until end of the 19th century, nearly all scientists believed that atom was an entirety, the smallest particle in the matter and couldn’t be subdivided any more. On the night of 8th, November, 1895, when carrying out experiment on cathode ray, the German physicist Roentgen chanced on a new beta ray, which had a strong penetration factor. It was called X-Ray for they knew little about it. It caused a great sensation in scientific community when Roentgen published this research result in public. People began to evaluate again the question that whether atom could be subdivided any more.
In 1896, some physicists have discovered that uranium ore could generate a ray with strong penetration power, which was similar with the X-ray, even without irradiation of sunlight or other rays. It was called radioactivity later. In 1902, Marie Curie extracted 0.12 grams of pure radium in laboratory, the radioactivity of which is 2 million times stronger than that of uranium. Besides, it could generate heat without burning. Bases on calculation, heat quantity yielded by it was 250 thousand times of coal with the same amount. Due to slow release, energy yielded by it had little value. It became two new elements of helium and lead after completing release.
In 1898, physicists Rutherford discovered three rays given out by radium when carrying out experiment of inspecting X-ray by radium, that is, α-ray, β-ray, and γ-ray. He put forward the theory that radioactivity was the process of self-transmutation of atom, which have caused great impact on the theory that atom could be subdivided and was an epoch-making events in physics history.
Until this point, during the research on X-ray, some physicists have found that X-ray was a kind of particle flow with high speed. Mass of the particle was 1/1841 of hydrogen atom. This was the first discovered particle which was smaller than atom. It was called electron.
In 1911, Rutherford bombarded gold foil with only 1/ 200,000 centimeter in thickness by alpha particle. He found that averagely, one alpha particle among 20,000 was bounced back. It was obvious that alpha particle met some compact matters with very little volume. Actually, this matter was atomic nucleus. Meanwhile, Rutherford made a further presumption that, there was not only particle with positive charge, but also particles without charge. The particle with positive charge was called proton, while the particle without charge was called neutron. This presumption was verified later.
Physicists were still continuing their researches and experiments. But the goal of them was not for getting nuclear energy. Because research of nuclear physics at that time was not deep enough, imagination for nuclear energy still lacked conditions.
In 1919, during his experiment on bombarding nitrogen-atoms by alpha particles resealed from polonium, Rutherford found that nitrogen atomic nucleus could become oxygen isotope after resealing one proton, which was the first time of artificial transmutation. Later, he bombarded several elements such as boron, fluorine, sodium and phosphor by alpha particle, from which proton was released. It indicated that atomic nucleus could be subdivided.
However, proton was not resealed when bombarding some heavy atomic nucleus by alpha particle. The reason was that alpha particle is positively charged, while atomic nucleuses of heavy elements have more protons with positively charge. Because like charges repel each other, so alpha particle without enough energy could not be able to bombard protons of heavy elements, just like a little kid could not move a heavy stone.
In 1932, during his experiment about bombarding boron and beryllium by alpha particle, Chardwick, a student of Rutherford, found another composition of atomic nucleus—neutron. Because neutron was not charged, it could not be repelled by charge of atomic nucleus. Besides, mass of the neutron was much heavier than that of electron, so it could thrust aside extranuclear electron easily. Actually, discovery of neutron was just one step away from opening the door of nuclear energy.
However, in April, 1933, not a long time after neutron was discovered by his student, Rutherford straight out expressed his opinion during his speech about atomic nucleus fission on London Institute of British. He said, it is hopeless to get energy be relying on this measure (that is nuclear energy), because this method of generating energy is poor and low-efficient. It is just pure theoretical supposition that transmutation of atom will be a power sources.
His prediction was very pessimistic. Rutherford was one of the greatest scientists in area of atomic physics and was generally acknowledged as the Father of Modern Experimental Physics. Besides Einstein, no one could match his outstanding contribution and pioneer status. However, when he was standing at the door of nuclear energy and was to open the door just by pushing it, he put forward such a pessimistic prediction. More interestingly, Einstein endorsed his prediction. This fact served to show that might of science and technology was seriously underestimated by the most outstanding scientists, let alone ordinary people.
In 1934, the Curies bombarded aluminum by alpha particle, and then a kind of isotope of phosphor was produced. Immediately, the isotope transmuted itself into silicon and gave out positron. This was the first time to artificially produce radioactive element.
Encouraged by the achievement of the Curies, Fermi tried to use neutron to replace alpha particle to bombard atomic nucleus. At that time, 92 kinds of elements were discovered. So Fermi carried out bombardment experiments for these 92 kinds of elements one by one. When he bombarded the 92nd element of uranium by slow neutron, a new element with total different chemical property was obtained, which was heavier than uranium. Fermi couldn’t give out explanation for this; he thought it was a kind of transuranium element just because the uranium absorbed the neutron. But this analysis was wrong.
Hahn, Meitner and Bohr made a further verification and correct explanation for this experiment result, the conclusion was: bombarding the uranium by slow neutrons, uranium atomic nucleus would be split into two after trapping one neutron. The so called transuranium element was actually a new kind of element (barium). During the process of atomic nucleus splitting, it would result in mass loss, thus releasing energy. The process of atomic nucleus splitting was referred to as nuclear fission by Bohr, thus, a new term was created in nuclear physics.
This creative explanation was a major breakthrough in nuclear physics. Based on this, Fermi bloodlessly made further speculation: uranium atomic nucleus could release one or more neutrons during the process of nuclear fission, then, these new neutrons continued to bombarding other uranium atomic nucleus, which would release more neutrons to bombard other unsplit uranium atomic nucleus, thus forming “chain reaction”. This “chain action” would be done in a flash and released tremendous energy. This indicated that Fermi has made clear the method and principle of generating nuclear energy, and it was obvious that nuclear energy could be utilized.
However, at the same time, Bohr, one of the giants of science, was still alleged that practical application of nuclear fission was impossible, and given out 15 reasons. Meaningfully, reasons put forward by Bohr were got support from a number of scientists. From this we can see that, how inconceivable the science and technology is, who humbugged all those outstanding scientists.
But, it was understandable. Based on calculation, if one kilogram of uranium-235 is fully made out fission, it will lose 1 gram of mass. According to the formula of E=MC2, 1 gram of matter will generate energy equaling to 20 thousand tons of high explosive TNT when exploding in a flash. You can image how powerful it is. Anyone would be awed with so tremendous power, including those giants of science standing on top of the pyramid. It was difficult for them to accept the conclusion that human could mobilize the nuclear energy.
Fermi’s speculation was verified in several laboratories immediately. Experiment result was fission of uranium atomic nucleus could release 2-3 neutrons. This result served as a substantive proof for “chain action”. The verified “chain action” indicated that nuclear energy would be mobilized, key for opening the door of nuclear energy were got.
However, it was still difficult for scientists to persuade the U.S. politicians to carry out research on atom bomb, for politicians totally didn’t believe this “fantastic and impossible” invention. At last, scientists asked Einstein, who was the most prestigious one in scientific community to write to Roosevelt, president of the United States. Suggestions put forward by Einstein were denied initially by Roosevelt.
(III)Transgenic Technology
From ancient times, biologic hereditary was affected by nature. Appearance of human being, any animal and plant are results of natural evolution and products of biomutation over many generations. Sphinx-like figures or devils in animal forms are figures existing in mythus. Maybe no one can believe several decades ago those human beings can willfully create a species just like legendary God or the immortal, besides, they want the species to be what they like, and with the characters what they want.
But today, by virtue of science and technology, human being has been equipped with the power that only the legendary God or the immortal have. Human can create new species or change characteristics of species according to their own will, including changing themselves.
Why they hold the above-mentioned power is because the revealment of secret for biological inheritance. In the mid 19th century, Gregor Johann Mendel found that there were stable genetic factor in seeds of plant by experimenting with pea. The characteristics of species were decided by the genetic factors. In the 50s of the last century, some scientists revealed the double-spiral structure of DNA, and confirmed that genetic code of biology existed in DNA (genetic code in RNA only for few viruses). The discovery has provided imaginary space for human being to determine characteristics of species. So, a number of scientists began to devote to this.
DNA is a complicated long chain molecule, genes which can determine characteristics of life are each fragment on DNA. Each gene determines the according property of biology. For example, human being has 30 thousand to 35 thousand genes, which determine the appearance, complexion, gender, physique, character and intelligence correspondingly. The rest may be deduced by analogy, all properties of biology have the corresponding relation with its genes, changing of genes of biology can change properties of biology.
Actually, the above-mentioned discovery has identified the convertibility of biological property in theory. It is not difficult to understand. Remove the unnecessary genes in DNA molecule, and paste on necessary genes, then, transplant the new DNA molecule to a proper cell. The species which is created is the species that we need to change its property. Based on this way of thinking, monsters of Sphinx-like figures or devils in animal forms can surely be created, fruits with the taste of plum but large as an apple can be produced, or kidney bean can be grown as big as a cucumber.
If taking the above-mentioned theory as the basis, the next question is technology. It is by no measures easy to change DNA structure. DNA molecule is only two parts per million millimeters, while gene is only a small fragment on DNA molecule. How to cut and paste on such a small gene? It is a technological question that is difficult to be resolved. That is to say, core technology for recombination of DNA molecule is that finding “surgical knife” for cutting DNA molecule and “bonding agent” for bonding genes.
However, only through several years’ efforts, core technology for DNA recombination has been settled. Scientists found that endonucleases of nucleic acid with restriction can be used as “surgical knife” to cut fragment of genes; later, they found several kinds of enzymes which can be used to bonding and recovering DNA split and was called “joining enzyme”. Based on the above-mentioned research achievements, in 1971, scientists carried out cutting and bonding for DNA molecule for the first time, forming a new and different DNA molecule, thus, realizing the recombination of genes.
Evolution of a complicated creature shall be completed in at least hundreds of thousands of years, or more than billions of years. Take human being for example, based on the knowledge of evolution history, it can be dated back to over 10 million years ago when human and apes each going his own way for the first time on the road of evolution. Around 6 million years ago, apes just evolved into human being. While, for human being, it took about 50 thousands of years to finish its evolution. That is to say, it took about 10 million years for human being to complete its natural evolution. However, it only takes dozens of or hundreds of days to create a new species by using genetic technology.
In numerous myths and legends in older times, only God and the immortal can create creatures. But today, the ability of human being to create creatures can compete with God and the immortal. Just think about it, how inconceivable it is.
II. Reflecting on Cognition for Science and Technology of Human Being
The more predominate, the more distant with the mass. The most characteristic of cognition for science and technology of human being is that restriction of thought is very strong. They always doubt that science and technology can realize that. Reversely, powerful force of science and technology always overthrow all imagination and assumption of human being, and bring about unexpected surprise or blow out of the dark. Just because this common psychology, some scientists and philosopher who have an unusual degree of enlightenment are always sneered at or mocked, even persecuted.
As we all know, Einstein, the founder and a comprehensive person of modern physics, has made many scientific achievements in his lifetime. But, none of the achievements can compete with the theory of relativity, which innovated the basic theory frame of physics, resolved many questions that couldn’t settle by Newtonian mechanics, as well as successfully predicted many physical phenomenons.
For example: according to analysis of Newtonian mechanics, for advancing and moving of Mercury at perihelion, it is thought that there is a new planet near Mercury. Actually, this new planet has not been found through years’ of observation. But, if we make deduction based on the theory of relativity, solar gravity creates curve in space, which can give a good explanation for the disparity of 43 seconds in the advancing and moving of Mercury at perihelion. Take another example, theory of relativity predicted that, in high gravitational field, spectrum would move to the red end, which was successfully verified in later astro-observation; in addition, theory of relativity predicted that gravitational field would cause beam to deflex. Einstein has given out accurate calculation that there is 1.7 seconds of deflexion when starlight skims through surface of the sun. This precise predictable data was fully verified in later observation for total eclipse of the Sun.
The world was startled by a series of successes of theory of relativity. Judging panel of the Nobel Prize decided to grant the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics to Einstein. But, some problems occurred when this decision was made. Due to the inconceivability of the theory of the relativity, even the most outstanding scientists could not understand it and opposed to it. The most opposed ones were scientists who have won the Nobel Prize in German. They alleged that, if the theory of relativity was granted the Nobel Prize, they would return all prize medals they have been awarded. Under the great pressure, selection committee of the Nobel Prize had no choice but make a turnabout, that is, grant the prize to Einstein as the founder of theory of photoelectric effect. The theory of relativity was always had no way of winning the Nobel Prize. Continental drift theory, heliocentric theory and biological evolutionism which were put forward before, all met the same destiny. Why should this thing happen?
Based on the analysis for the acknowledgement for science and technology of human being, we can summarized the following two characteristics:
1. Serious Underestimate for the Force of Science and Technology
Recognition and assessment for science will always go two extremes. When we looking back at any time in history, we will find that magic effect of scientific and technological achievements become faint. The longer time of obtaining these achievements, the more indifferent we are. We took it for granted. Everyday, we are keeping intimate contact with these achievements. Just because scientific theories have revealed the essence of them, we can see through them by relying on directions of scientific achievements. After knowing the existence of earth's magnetism, it is easy to understand that why magnetic needle always points to north and south; after comprehending optic principle, it is not difficult to imagine that through combining the lens we can see places that naked eyes cannot see; when we understand the dynamics of machinery, we can imagine the automobile’s operating principle easily. However, before these basic discoveries, theories and laws were revealed, all of these were unimaginable to us.
By contrast, when looking forward to the future, our recognizing attitude for science is totally different. We will always walk into a narrow domain, that is, we are very confident with the scientific achievements previously obtained, and believe that we have mastered so many things. Even though there are many unknown fields for us to explore, we will think that they are not far away from what we have mastered. So, we are restricted to weigh up the power of science and technology in the future by current views. Sometimes, even the most outstanding scientists will get caught up into the situation of self-isolation. Most scientists get into the habit of thinking that researches carrying out by them are the final truth, but actually, most research achievements are periodical ones, which will be replaced by the more advanced ones.
When Newtonian mechanics was established, hardly no one was doubtful of its absolute correctness, all regarded Newton’s theory as Bible in natural science, so did the finest scientists. In the New Year’s Day of 1900, Lord Kelvin, a famous physicist, delivered a far-reaching speech on the New Year’s Celebrations held by the Royal Society in Britain. He said in confidence that, the mansion of science has been built up, what we need to do in the future is just patching work. But there are still two black clouds in the sunny sky, one is ether drift experiment about communication media of light carried out Michael-Molly; the other is what is so called ultraviolet catastrophe relating with radiation from a hot body. Out of Kelvin’s great surprise, it was these two insignificant clouds that shocking the base of classic physics and caused a revolution in scientific community. The theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, born in this revolution, led physics from the era of Newton to the era of Einstein.
Practice has shown that Newtonian mechanics was able to explain many phenomenons in universe from a macroscopic view; while from a microscopic view, it was not able to settle many questions about inner part of atomic nucleus. It was at best a limited approximate truth, which is bound to be revised by the theory of the relativity and quantum mechanics. In fact, today’s theory of the relativity and quantum mechanics are not final truth. Some natural phenomenon cannot be explained by them, subjects of scientific research in physics cannot be directed by them. So the theory of the relativity and quantum mechanics need to be developed and improved, to be revised sooner or later, maybe to be overthrown.
In the history of science, many truths that have thought to be absolutely correct have been overthrown. On the road to creating society and renovating society, we have achieved so many that we never thought before. Though we have achieved so much, we seriously underestimate future scientific and technological achievements, as well as the powerful force resealed by them.
By analyzing the past, it is not overdue to get such an evaluation, that is, recognition and understanding for science and technology of human being are still extremely shallow. Science and technology is more powerful than we have thought, maybe zillion times more than we have thought. Because human being began to devote their enthusiasm to scientific research and technological innovation from the Industrial Revolution, which was just about 200 years. But in the future, there are numerous 200-years’. During this long history of future, no one will know how many magic scientific laws will be dig out by human being, how many inconceivable technological achievements will be created. It is for sure that, we can’t assess and measure contents of science and technology in hundreds of, thousands of and tens of thousands of years by today’s view.
2. Breakthrough in Theory is the Key for Breakthrough in Recognition
Most of the time in the history of civilization, science and technology was isolated. Science was pure science, which was mainly theoretical research, giving focus on revealing the essential law of nature. So it was called natural science for a long time. While technology was related with craftsman, purely referring to research and innovation of techniques.
When degree of overall civilization in human society was not so advanced, it was not necessary to combine science and technology. All products, which were used in production, daily life and social demands, could meet with requirements through intuitional technique upgrading and innovation, even at the early stage of Industrial Revolution. Before the early stage of Industrial Revolution, scientific and technological achievements which were applied in practice could be imagined intuitionally, so surprise brought about by them was limited.
As for the ancient inventions in human history, hermetic art could not be explained by chemical theories; compass could not be explained by geomagnetic theory, other inventions, which could not be explained by theories at that time, were few. Those inventions were almost discovered by chance. Besides these, most inventions could be obtained through imagination and research and development. Whatever complicated and unique of these inventions, it was not difficult for people to understand.
Not long after the Industrial Revolution, science and technology were combined. Major technological inventions were not simple and intuitional things, all became more complicated and abstract. So science and technology became a united term that was hard to separate. In addition, each breakthrough in scientific theory would bring about a series of technological breakthrough, along with the appearance of a series of related scientific and technological products. It was difficult to imagine the magic effect and inconceivability of these new technologies and products for those people who didn’t understand new scientific theories. For example, if we didn’t deeply understand mass-energy conversion theory, it was hard to imagine that a small nuclear could release power that equaled to hundreds of thousands of high explosive; if we didn’t discover theory of biological, it was hard to imagine that biological species, which could be formed in nature through millions of, or even tens of millions of years, could be produced in scientists’ laboratory just in several months, or even several weeks.
So, at this time when science and technology have been combined together, each major breakthrough in recognition for science must be relied on breakthrough in scientific theories. For example, after understanding the law of electromagnetic induction in theories, scientists could associate a series of magic inventions with this theory. Electric generator, electric motor, telegram, telephone and internet were all developed under direction of this theory.
Electromagnetic wave was also discovered under the enlightenment of this theory. After understanding the existence of electromagnetic wave, scientists thought to transmits sound and image by using it, so video, television and wireless telegraph and mobile phone were invented; scientists also thought to control information by electromagnetic wave. So, space vehicle which is billions of kilometers far away can be controlled through remote control. Without breakthrough in theory, there would be no these visualizations and achievements. Meanwhile, just because of this, it was not difficult for a person, who was know a little about electromagnetic wave, even just heard about it to understand when new electromagnetic products were produced. Because there were many related products around him.
Another example, when theory of biological genetics was discovered, it was easy to carry out recombination for biological genes. So, it was not surprising when scientists put forward to cultivate tomatoes as big as watermelon; to let a frog have six legs and a monkey have two heads. Moreover, scientists can make further association based on the mastered theory of biological genetics. For example, under the condition that ethincal was not taken into consideration, human can change their genes so as to become more beautiful or uglier, smarter or more stupid.
The above-mentioned things confirmed one fact, that is, scientific theory is lighthouse that directs science and technology. Technological products which can be deduced within the scope of scientific theories can almost be developed through efforts of human being.
Correspondingly, when scientific theory realized breakthrough, things which were considered to be unimaginable could be naturally accepted by humans only that within the imaginary scope of the theory. Maybe they thought it was magic but understandable. By contrast, without breakthrough in theories, all inventions related to these will be generally considered to be impossible.
Therefore, breakthrough in scientific theory is key for breakthrough in recognition in science and technology. Basically, scientific theory can neither restrict the development of scientific technology, nor promote the development of scientific technology. Scientific theory will not only greatly restrict objective recognition of human being for power of scientific technology, but also greatly promote objective recognition of human being.
III. Deduction: Annihilating Measures will Necessarily Appear
After understanding the general characteristics of recognition of science and technology; we can make out a further description for it: science and technology is forever inconceivable, with enormous force. People at any times could not make out precise description for it, because we stand on a certain history point forever, we have future forever, which means many scientific laws have not been revealed and natural phenomenon has not been discovered. If only human being has not at the end of life, science is limitless, which is just the inconceivability of science.
We must not only admit this inconceivability, but also face it with a correct attitude. Through we are not sure how many and what kinds of scientific and technological achievements would appear in the future, we are for sure to draw a precise conclusion, that is, power of scientific and technological achievements in the future is several times stronger than that of today, which either benefit human being, or destroy human being.
Then, if we take any time in the future as a starting point, though destructive force yielded by science and technology at that time is much stronger than that of the most powerful nuclear weapon and toxin of genetic biology at present, it must not be impassable peak. Because as long as science is developing, more destructive measures are sure to appear. If science continues developing like this, the trend of more and more destructive force will continue. From this we can make a conclusion that, there will be one day when the destructive force is strong enough to destroy human being, then, annihilation Measures will be surely to appear.