Folly of science?

                Whenever I hear of these great breakthroughs and ideas in nanotechnology such as buckyballs, nanotubes, and their possibilities to store medicine or build strong structures I think of how far science in general has progressed. I have always felt that science was always advancing, that it always had a purpose to push our understanding of our world further. I still do think that science does expand our understanding of everything but ever since I heard James Gimzewski speak about science, I have found it funny how scientists often have no idea what they’re doing as scientists (in the general sense).

                Gimzewski made it sound like he simply stumbled upon his discovery of the nano-gear, and yet he got an incredible amount of publicity for what he doesn’t seem too surprised to find. He transformed great discoveries like the buckyball and nanotube into useless chunks of carbon when all these years, the media has been praising them. Gimzewski changed my view of today’s scientists from people who are complete experts on the outcomes of any of their experiments and research into more loose ended professionals who deal with discoveries as they come.

                Of course I don’t think Gimzewski really means to be negative about such discoveries. After all, with more research, who knows what we can make of all the useless discoveries in nanotech. I think he was spot on when he emphasized how much more important imagination was compared to knowledge. By seeing beyond all the useless stuff we have created so far, we can possibly discover something of a true break through. We may even find something that can make useless discoveries usefull.

                I guess we can go full circle here and conclude out quarter with Gimzewski’s statement about imagination. What would science be without imagination? Science would just be the study of what is. Without art, without imagination, without something different, absurd, creative, or whatever, we wouldn’t be here with our tiny laptops, modern medicine, artificial flavoring, hemi cars, ect. ect. Science would be folly without imagination.