Incredible - that so much was done in such a short time. Less than 500 years from Copernicus to the present. In that time the world - and our minds- have been totally transformed. Only once in human history has there been such a radical transformation. The earlier one was the agricultural revolution; from hunter-gathering to a settled life with writing and cities and all the other stuff that makes up civilization.
Science has been that trans-formative. Science has unleashed the incredible power and control efficiency that makes life what it is today. Unless you go into the desert naked you will always be in the company of science. The inventions of science make up almostthe entire fabric of modern life.
Yet it is the work of so few! Probably less than a thousand men are responsible for all of the leading, key ideas that make up the body of science. And these men were not in any sense organized. They did not represent an ideology or a political/social movement. All they shared was curiosity. That, and perhaps a penchant to share. Form the very beginning they knew about each other and corresponded. Here and there they formed discussion groups. And -or course - a belief that the answers to questions about the natural world were best found by observation and experiment. (Even this premise was radical; upending millennia of beliefs on thinking and problem solving. Amazing!
I think, though, that the incredible power and reach of science has given many of us some misconceptions. First I'll mention the notion that there is such a thing as 'science'. There isn't What we have in actuality are the sciences. Each of the major sciences stands alone, with it's own methodologies and basic assumptions. To be sure, there are often fruitful overlaps and cross fertilizations. Yet there is no underlying system binding them all together. There is no scientific view of the natural world as a whole. For all that chemistry and biology can get together very nicely in areas like molecular biology, chemistry and biology remain two very distinct disciplines. Does this mean that reality itself is full of discontinuities? I won't rule that out, though I am more inclined to suspect that these discontinuities come about because our minds work better that way. The concepts we need to do geology are quite distinct from those we use to do particle physics.
At the same time I believe that the natural world includes many examples of 'emergent properties'; that is some kinds of organization show some degree of independence from 'simpler' or more 'basic organizations. The prime examples are the partial autonomy of living things from the rules of chemistry and the quasi autonomy of the mind from biology.
I'm stepping into a hornet's nest with this last comment. I'm a psychologist - and a rather biologically oriented one. Yet, I am VERY unconvinced that a neurological model of thinking can ever be achieved. Remarkably intelligent and learned people disagree with me. But we have been here before. One can read in the history of psychiatry how, at the beginnings of the twentieth centrality a 'nervous degeneracy' theory was in the ascendant, where some chemicals were believed to be organizing and running the mind. But let me say here that I am pretty convinced in general that the kingdom of science stops abruptly at the gates to the kingdoms if the arts and the humanities. 'Social' scientists will disagree. But while a certain kind of rough-carpentered work like polling and demographics is possible, any real science of human doings is ridiculous. Maybe we simply don't have the mathematics. Certainly probability and central tendency mathematics are of no use. The name 'social science' is a misnomer.When someone comes up with the laws of Shakespeare or Mozart behavior I will look again. meanwhile Meanwhile, I am not bothered by the idea that the doings of humanity don't lend themselves to any known scientific method. My heart is ultimately with science, but I'm not hubristic about it. Thanks for attending!