Science and Technology of the 21st Century
Chen Ning Yang - Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tsinghua University of Beijing
Nanjing, China - 17 September 2001
When talking about the future more than 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin (1709 - 1790) once said:
The progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we at present have no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known in years hence.
He was right. In the past two centuries, knowledge of mankind has indeed increased tremendously and many new things have indeed emerged. Things such as trains, ships, skyscrapers, electric lights, movies, telephones and radios, for instance, were never seen by Franklin. By the latter half of the 20th century, new things began to emerge even faster, like mushrooms. They included computers, nuclear generation of electricity, television, supersonic aircraft, man-made satellite, laser, biotechnology, organ transplantation, internet, and many others. All these were not only unseen by Franklin, but also undreamed of by people 100 years after him.
Why was it possible that there appeared such a high speed of progress by the late 20th century? The answer is simple: After five or six centuries of gestation, birth and growth, scientific development reached the stage of technical take-off by the 20th century. As a result, human productive forces have kept growing at an exponential rate year after year, the number of people devoted to the development of new technology has kept increasing year after year, and the amount of funds invested in new technology has kept growing year after year. All these developments have contributed to the prosperity of today and the bright future of the 21st century.
Let me use two figures to illustrate the above-mentioned situation of high-speed development. First, the world¡¯s agricultural population amounted to more than 80 per cent of the total world population 200 years ago. Today, the agricultural population of the United States accounts for only one or two per cent of the country¡¯s total population. With such a small agricultural population, the United States can still export its farm products. This indicates that the productive force of farmers has grown by more than 100 times. Second, the total assets of the scientific and technical companies newly set up in the last 30 years have neared US$1,000 billion (see April 27th, 1998 issue of the Fortune magazine of the United States), an unprecedented acceleration of investment in new enterprises.
Before taking up discussion of the prospects of development in the 21st century, let¡¯s first of all review the origin of two extremely important scientific and technical developments of the 20th century: modern computers and the double-helix structure of DNA.
Modern computers
Computers built with many vacuum tubes came into being as early as the 1930s. They can be said to be the ancestors of modern computers. Two new concepts of key importance were indispensable, however, for them to develop into modern computers. The first key concept was pointed out by mathematician J. Von Neumann (1903 - 1957). When discussing the structure of a new computer in 1945, he wrote:
The overall logical control of the machine will be effected from the memory ¡ by orders formulated in a binary digital code.
This is a revolutionary concept because a program recorded in memory can be changed easily and rapidly without the need of human intervention. For this reason, modern computers should be actually called stored program computers.
Why was this concept introduced by a mathematician instead of an engineer? This is a thought-provoking question. The answer: von Neumann once did research in mathematical logic. A major breakthrough in this field was the Gödel Numbers introduced by Gödel (1906 - 1978), labeling all possible propositions and proofs with numbers. Since von Neumann had been deeply impressed by Gödel numbers, he got the idea of applying this breakthrough in logic to the structure of computers. Hence the emergence of stored program computers.
The second key concept was the discovery of semi-conductors in the 1950s and their replacement of vacuum tubes ever since. Because the size of semi-conductors can be very very small, they are now being used to make chips in large numbers and at very small costs. One chip can function as 1 million vacuum tubes. As a result, use of computers has been extended to every corner of society, and the computer industry has become one of the biggest industries in the world.
What I would like to mention particularly here is the way in which semi-conductors were discovered. They were the products of quantum mechanics which in turn was the product of study of pure basic physics in the 1920s, a field that had nothing to do with applications at that time.
The double-helix structure of DNA
James Watson (1928 - ) and Francis Crick (1916 - ) published an article in 1953, in which they pointed out that the structure of DNA, a genetic molecule, was a double-helix. This article is now universally acknowledged as the most important article in biology in the 20th century. This article pointed out that biological multiplication is based on the chemical force between the two helixes in the double-helix structure. They could join or split from each other, thus revealing a big secret of the Creator and bringing mankind into the era of man-made life. The influences of this article have been extremely profound and far-reaching, and biotechnology has developed as a result of one of the influences of this article.
I would also like to point out particularly here that the discovery of the double-helix structure is a pure theoretical discovery which had nothing to do with any applications at the time.
Scientific and technical development in the coming 30-40 years
Due to the fast speed of scientific and technical development today, it is impossible for us to predict how the world shall look by the end of the 21st century, just as no one at the beginning of the 20th century could have dreamed of biotechnology and internet at the end of the century. If we only discuss developments in the coming 30-40 years, however, some big trends are already fairly clear today. I would now like to state some of my personal views about these trends.
1. The focus of scientific and technical development in the coming 30-40 years will continue to shift towards technology.
Scientific and technical study can be roughly divided into basic study, development study and application study (see Graph 1 and Graph 2). Let me give you an example. The study of quantum mechanics is a basic study because it drives mainly at the basic law of nature and has nothing to do with application. It is an active field of study in the first 30 years of the 20th century. The study of semi-conductors is a development study because it focuses on the development of widely applicable components and parts using concepts of quantum mechanics. As a field of study in the 1950s, it lies between fundamental laws and applications. The manufacturing of chips is an application study because it goes after the new innovations in the manufacturing of chips. It is a study started in the 1970s.
Another example is biotechnology. The discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953 is a basic study. Based on the structure of DNA, many biologists in the world have developed new concepts and technologies in the scores of years since then. These are basic study plus development study. Based on them a new industry ¨C biotechnology ¨C has been developed in the recent 30 years. This is development study plus application study. Distinction between the three studies is not so apparent in this case. There is no question, however, to classify them roughly into the upper, the middle and the down streams.
Generally speaking, basic study plus development study constitutes a scientific study, carried out in universities and research institutes. Development study plus application study, on the other hand, constitutes a technical study, carried out in industrial research institutes and factories. I am of the opinion that the focus of global scientific and technical development in the coming 30-40 years will continue to shift towards technical study, a trend that can be clearly seen from the comparison made in Graph 1 and Graph 2. Although basic, development and application studies all gained momentum between 1950 and 2000, the gain of the latter two, and the last in particular, was bigger. This general trend has its origin in the following historic fact: Thanks to the results of basic study in the first half of the 20th century, human understanding and control of the physical and biological world have been greatly strengthened. As a result, new applications and new products have come forth one after another, and the great surge of application study as shown in Graph 2 came into being. This trend of development will continue in the coming 30-40 years.
The following fields will see the most rapid development of application study in the coming 30-40 years: (1) Extensive application of chips. They will be applied to big and small buildings, households, automobiles, human bodies, factories, stores, and almost everywhere. (2) Medical science and medicines. (3) Biotechnology. It is my opinion that the development of these three fields will serve as the locomotive of world economic development in the coming 30-40 years.
2. How to handle the relative weight of science and technology will be a problem of extreme complexity, especially in countries with comparatively small population (say, a population of less than 10 million) and in developing countries.
On the one hand, these countries suffer from fund shortages and are under pressure for short-term economic development. So there is a need to emphase technology over science. But on the other hand, the development of technology is based on the development of science. Mathematical logic, quantum mechanics and double-helix structure, mentioned above, all fall into the category of science instead of technology. It is these sciences that gave rise to a large number of technologies. So science must not be neglected. The proper relative weight to be given to science and to technology is a difficult decision that should be based on the historic and development situation of each country. There can be no global rule to go by.
What I would like to point out specially here is that there is a marked difference between the general policies adopted in the past by India, Brazil and China, the world¡¯s three big developing countries with big populations, a difference that will produce importance influences for a long period of time to come. This difference is the spirit of self-reliance practiced in New China. This spirit was encouraged for the first 30 years. Then, the long-term policy of reform and open-up was introduced and put into implementation for 20 years. Thanks to these policies China now leads both India and Brazil in science and technology. I believe this is a history worthy of detailed analysis.
3. The trend of trade globalization will continue, especially after China joins the World Trade Organization.
Trade globalization has become prevalent today because of the development of science and technology. It is impossible, of course, to have no voice of opposition to such a big trend, a trend that is influencing so many people. In overall terms, however, globalization is in the interest of the majority of the people in the world and therefore will continue into the future.
More than 20 years ago, Deng Xiaoping guided China toward a new direction with his outstanding farsight and incomparable will, enabling China to catch the train of trade globalization. This is a big milestone not only in the history of China, but also in the history of the world.
Globalization is an unprecedented big change in the world scene. In the next 10 or 20 years, it will dramatically create more human productive forces. But many new problems of extreme complexity will also crop up. These new problems will intermingle with problems of depleting resources, pollution, ethics, and religion, creating new challenges for mankind in the middle of the 21st century.
4. China will emerge as a scientific and technical leader in the world.
Because China today still lags behind advanced countries in terms of its hi-tech development, many people have concluded that China is not good at science and technology. This is a view that is completely wrong. Modern science and technology were introduced into China only in the 20th century. Within a time span of just one century, through efforts by merely a few generations of people, China had started from real zero to attained the level of being able to launch and recover its Shenzhou Spacecraft, an incredibly complex operation. How could such an unprecedented high-speed development happen? I had made an analysis of this history in an article ¡°History of the Introduction of Modern Science into China¡± in 1993. I argued that there were some basic intrinsic factors for such rapid development of science and technology in China. These factors are now being further strengthened and consolidated in the 21st century. So I believe China¡¯s scientific and technical level will surely rise to the top of the world by the year 2030 or 2040.
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