‘Men walk as prophecies of the next age.’

Ralph Waldo Emerson

How could we, you and me, have imagined the world we live in today at the age of ten or eleven? How can the sum of man’s knowledge and curiosity have taken us so far on the journey of say the last 40,000 years? And where will tomorrow be leading?

It may be that about 40,000 years ago our species made a leap in brain function, because it is from this period that there has been found evidence of artefacts produced by our species for reasons that go beyond survival. They have produced drawings on cave walls, and small statuettes identifying female forms, and imaginary beasts, mythical beings that have bodies of two legged creatures and heads of lions. What that shows is the development of a brain which reflects on the human condition, and wants to comment on it. And that goes beyond finding dinner and staying healthy in the body.

We are not evolved , we are evolving and it is an exciting part of history to be alive in, when science, technology and creative thinking have taken giant steps in this adults lifetime. Exciting and terrifying. The paradox of our species having arrived at a point where space travel is possible, when communication is immediate in most parts of the globe, when we can produce life in a laboratory, and yet there are children dying of malaria because they don’t have the resource to own a simple net, defies comprehension.

Most simple problems become complex because we allow them to do so, global politics, domestic policies dictate that problems that are solvable become difficult to address. Cern has scientists from across the globe overcoming the difficulties of language, culture and politics in an attempt to push back the boundaries of scientific knowledge. Could this model be useful as an example to leaders of industry and politicians?

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/About-en.html