Solving riddles in a world without end

WHAT REMAINS TO BE DISCOVERED by John Maddox (Macmillan, GBP 20) SCIENCE is the greatest asset the human race possesses; it is now also the most controversial area of human endeavour.

John Maddox has seen more changes in the world of science than almost anyone else alive today.

For 22 years he was editor-in-chief of the world's foremost science journal, Nature, and in this capacity he has witnessed and written about the advent of the laser, the transistor, the genetic revolution, the unravelling of some of the fundamental laws of physics, the moon-landings, cloning ... But true to the fundamental spirit of his chosen discipline, he knows that science questions itself and is never satisfied with the answers it unveils. In this book, he shows that what does remain to be discovered is both humbling and inspiring. Science is now 500 years old, but we have only just started on the road to discovery. We may think we have the answers but as science finds answers to one problem it unravels others - this is how it evolves and how the quality of our lives improve. This evolutionary nature of science pervades all its many facets. We know the basics of particle physics, but why is it that we cannot match quantum theory, the investigation of the subatomic world, with relativity, the theory that explains behaviour in the macrocosm? As Maddox points out, we are romping ahead with research into genetics and will soon complete the mapping of the human genome, a mammoth task involving finding the sequence of some six thousand million pairs of nucleotides, or bits of DNA in a cell. But even when we know this, it is an altogether different matter working out how all these pieces interrelate, and yet another leap to understand how we can manipulate them. We think we know so many things, yet the truth is that there is an almost infinite amount more to be known. An example comes from astronomy. Recent discoveries have revealed the presence of other planets orbiting alien stars, but we have no idea whether these worlds could harbour life. From the biological sciences and chemistry we know how neurones transmit information to the brain, that the brain is composed of trillions of neural connections, but we cannot define what is meant by "thought", let alone begin to explain the meaning of "consciousness" or even such everyday, nebulous but vitally important aspects of our existence such as humour or love. Many people fear science, convinced it does more harm than good, but these critics fail to realise that half a millennium of scientific endeavour has radically and forever altered the face of human existence and that we are all better off for it. And indeed, books like this remind us that we should not let our belief in this beautiful edifice run away with us. It reminds us that we are children playing on the beach, fascinated with a particularly shiny pebble or a crab in a rock pool, while before us lies waiting a mile of sand. It is sometimes argued that there will always remain unanswerable questions, puzzles science can never hope to solve, but it may simply be that we don't yet have enough information to answer them. But then again, do we really want all the answers anyway? Any good scientist knows there will always be greater riddles to lead us on.

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