In an English module that I take this semester we are required to write an essay on any controversial topic in science. The topic I proposed was ‘Is mathematics discovery or invention?’. Such an idle and philosophical question seems immediately radical in a world where much more urgent matters including designer babies and GMO food are calling for more debate, and yarning for reasonable regulations. Yet my topic was the centre of heated debates in the late 19th Century educated class.It was a Golden Age for intellectuals. The foundations of all known phenomena were firmly laid, the mechanics governed by Newton’s law; electricity, light and magnetism by Maxwell’s equations; the change of matters by chemical elements; and the wonderful world flora and fauna by Darwin’s theory of evolution. It was also the age when mathematicians were at their climax of optimism, creating an enormous number of new ways to think about space and numbers. They redefined counting numbers, abstractified the space by going to higher and higher dimensions, and dreamed up one infinity after another, thus raising the question: is mathematics discovered or created? Everything pointed to the same Enlightenmental belief, that the God is a rational God, that man is great, that human beings are able to approach divinity through reason and diligent study of nature.

Today, as I mentioned in the opening paragraph, it is unusual to hear in our campus a conversation on the nature of pure sciences. Universities around the world are more concerned with practical consequences of science than 150 years ago. Science is nowadays more described as a double-edged sword than a victory of human’s rational thinking. Thus comes the nostalgic question: why has the age of pure enjoyment of scientific explorations gone? Can we still rescue it, or is it just gone forever?

I have pondered on this for some time, and the quickest explanation I can find is that science is done differently now as it was then. State- and multi-billion-corps- funded projects are directing where science is going on a highly remarkable degree. As research got more complicated, as in the case of particle physics, big moneys are needed to simply build an apparatus like a ultra high speed collider. In the mean time, as science is found to be immensely powerful to boost technology and economy, funding unquestionably tend to flow to where the nations and the companies can benefit most, instead of, usually, where a scientist is interested most. Whether we like it or not, we have to admit that due to such financial matters, scientists since the 20th century have been encouraged more than ever before to be like businessmen, selling their ideas and competing for market shares. In a way this has made scientific research develop at an unprecedented rate, and have given rise to the extremely important industries like antibiotics and electronics that we are hugely indebted today, but on the other hand they have created such a bias over research topics that perhaps many valuable projects are aborted. The research on adverse effects of GMO food, for example, never goes well because major funding on biotechnology come from pro-GMO food companies.

The above reason is obvious enough, but a second factor lies in the problems met by science itself. Classical physics by Newton and Maxwell was found to be unable to explain phenomena at subatomic level and extremely high speeds. In order to understand them, clever but frustratingly difficult theories of quantum mechanics and relativity are needed. As I learn a modern physics module this semester, I can almost hear the moan of my inadequate mathematical background that struggles to handle it. In these theories, all physical meanings seem to cease into pure mathematical forms. They are so abstract that it is hard to believe that nature is really constructed this way. To make things even worse,  the frustration invaded mathematics as well. It was proven in 1931 by mathematician Goedel that it is impossible to generate a theory containing the notion of natural numbers that is both consistent and complete, which serves as the death blow to the pre-20th Century faith in a perfect Theory of Everything. This in combination with the vast number of puzzling problems in cosmology, chemistry, and biology raised in recent decades, written always in forbiddingly inexplicable terminologies, makes science simply less attractive than in the Victorian era.

The last reason I managed to figure out is that in the 20th Century human beings have proven ourselves to be not so close to divinity after all. The two World Wars, the Cold War, together with totalitarian regimes sprouting everywhere have established clearly that even the perfectly civilised and rational man can be easily driven by zeal (national pride)  ,threat,  greed. Science in most cases simply worsened the wars. In addition, the voices of the strikers, the feminists, the African Americans, and the environmentalists have revealed just on what a foundation was the Golden Age actually built, and just how far we are to the Enlightenmental creed that everyone is born equal. It became clear that humans can no longer ‘develop’ at the expense of the well-being of the weaker, the less fortunate and Nature. A lot more needs to be done to achieve a genuine Golden Age for the entire world.

Thus, though I am always in deep nostalgia of the science community in the 19th Century, I feel infinitely blessed that I am born into a more modern era. The Golden Age was at best a beautiful illusion, and I am able to learn the knowledge that scientists then could not learn, participate in huge projects that they could not imagine, and see the dark side of humanity and society that they were perhaps reluctant to see. On the other hand, such Utopian nostalgia is a reminder for me that as a scientist (to be) I can never betray my primary duty, which is to discover and understand the pure beauty of nature, regardless of perhaps how useless this appears to be.