The future of scientific thought

Abstract

Sir Paul Callaghan, physicist and founding director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, believed that science can provide many answers about the world we live in, but cannot tell us how to live. In this statement he highlights the relationship between science and society: while science is concerned with enquiry and scepticism-is this true?-society is concerned with values and beliefs-is this right?. Einstein viewed science as a powerful instrument, a knife that could be used for good or for ill, emphasising that science can be both a benefit and a risk to society. The future of science is likely to be shaped by how well we create connections and build relationships between science and society, rather than focusing on the differences and therefore the boundaries that separate science from society. This paper argues that scientific thought is not just the domain of scientists but of society and its representatives as well. Scientific thought is defined as what we dont know but want to know. To understand the role of scientific thought, it is necessary to understand the relationships between scientific thought, scientific capital, scientific activity and scientific knowledge. This paper argues that if scientific thought sets the direction, scientific capital is the propellant-the energy force that produces scientific activity. Scientific capital can be defined as the extent to which society supports science over time. Lastly, with a little luck, scientific activity leads to scientific knowledge. How this knowledge is collected, reported, stored and accessed will determine the direction of scientific thought going forward. This paper concludes by proposing a framework for assessing the relationship between science and society so that we might improve the quality of scientific thought in the future.