If you think about it, you would realise that scientific research in various fields affects our lives in different ways. There's research in weapon and military hardware, which some may argue is necessary for keeping the peace.

On the other hand, there's research in medical and environmental science, which all will agree improves the quality of life and brings societal well-being. Research in agriculture is crucial in helping to feed the world while industrial research creates wealth and in the process generates employment.

But it is the basic or blue-skies science, done purely for seeking knowledge that often brings about great leaps in the advancement of civilisation.

Astronomy is regarded as the oldest science. John Gribbin, at one time a research astrophysicist at the University of Sussex and a science writer wrote in his book The birth of time, "All of us have seen the stars, and few can have failed to wonder about their significance; science probably began when our ancestors first turned their eyes to the heavens and began to wonder what the stars are and how they got to be there." We can see how the progress in astronomical science changes human thinking over the ages.

Advance of civilisation

It was Aristotle and the ancient Greeks over two thousand years ago who first gave us the idea that the Earth was the centre of all creation. People lived happily in a flat world. Ptolemy who lived in Alexandria, Egypt in the second century was the first man to draw up a catalogue of the stars and measured the movement of the planets.

The flat world view had to be abandoned when the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed round the world in 1519-1522 and confirmed that the world was round. However people still firmly believed that the earth was the centre of the universe and the sun circled round the earth. At about that time Nicolaus Copernicus in Poland came out with the outrageous idea that it was the earth that went round the sun. This was against the teaching that the whole of creation exists for the sake of humanity. Copernicus' idea led to his persecution by the church.

In the early 1600s the German Johannes Kepler took up Copernicus' idea and worked out the orbits of the planets. Shortly after the Italian Galileo Galilei invented the telescope and Kepler's structure of the solar system was confirmed by observations. For this Galilei was put under arrest by the Catholic Church for spreading heresy. In the 1680s Isaac Newton in Cambridge discovered gravity and formulated the physical laws that govern planetary motion.

Undiscovered ocean of truth

Looking back, it seemed arrogant of man to believe we occupied the centre stage in the universe. As man probes deeper into creation, scientists began to recognise our insignificant place in the scheme of things.

This was reflected in the humility of Newton who wrote: "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

During the early part of the last century the discoveries of Edwin Hubble and other astronomers extended our knowledge of the world far beyond our solar system and home galaxy, the Milky Way. We are now reaching for the stars, to the edge of the universe.

With the theory of Einstein we continue to wander into the realm where we can never hope to reach even with our most advanced space craft. To that and beyond we reach with our mind. We are stretching to the limit of the human intellect in trying to get a glimpse of the world when the universe and time began.

Today every pupil in schools all over the world would have studied Newton's laws of motion. We have come a long way in understanding our world. If the religious authority had prevailed in stemming out the "heresies" we might still be living in a world in which the sun revolves around a flat earth. Instead humanity's search for the advancement of knowledge has gone back beyond the time before the birth of the universe. The discoveries continue to expand our view and change the way we think.

Humility in science

Studying the universe is a humbling experience. Astrophysics is the branch of science that deals with cosmic objects and the laws of physics that govern them. From their study astrophysicists realise that there is nothing special about the place we human beings occupy in the universe.

They believe in a "principle of terrestrial mediocrity" which says that we live in an ordinary part of the universe and our home galaxy could not be particularly remarkable among billions of others. The more we learn about the universe the more we recognise our insignificant place in it and the limit of humanity.

Arthur Eddington, an early pioneer in astrophysics at Cambridge during the years after World War I wrote that, "The lesson of humility has so often been brought home to us in astronomy that we almost automatically adopt the view that our own galaxy is not specially distinguished  far out in space, everywhere you go is the same. It is isotropic; in every direction you look out in space, you see the same scene. If you go far enough out in space you will lose sight of the earth, and the sun will look just like another star. You will not be able to make your way back. There is no road sign, no landmark, and no compass to tell the direction.

Looking for intelligence

Out of the vastness of this uniform universe, there ought to be other habitable places with life and civilisation.

In 1984, scientists across the world started a programme called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a "phone ET's home" effort, so to speak. But after looking for all these years, nothing has been found. Perhaps this is as expected as the state of the world today does not reflect any intelligence even on our own planet!

Though lacking in intelligence, we seem to have no lack of beauty. It is amazing that year after year the most desirable specimen of all creation whom we proclaim Miss Universe is to be found here on this unremarkable planet. It seems rather optimistic to dismiss the rest of the universe in thinking only the earth is capable of producing beautiful beings.

There is also no reason to believe that we are put into this world to be the masters of creation. We are but one of the many species sharing this world. Edward O Wilson, the noted Harvard evolutionary biologist writing in The future of life puts it beautifully, "The creature at your feet, dismissed as a bug or a weed is a creation in and of itself. It has a name, a million-year history and a place in the world."

Pursuit of knowledge

Arrogance of humanity often impedes the progress of knowledge. As we have seen in the past religion had added to the resistance to accept change in our concept of where we belong. In science we are taught that whatever is possible must exist. Things will happen if the laws of nature do not prevent it. In religion it is the opposite, things that are not compulsory are forbidden. Early thinkers were forbidden to speculate about the world.

In religion revealed knowledge is permanent and timeless. Holy scriptures may be thousands of years old but remain the truth. Scientific knowledge is empirical and has to fit in with observation. Science has a poor record of holding on to its theories. Scientific theories are revised when new discoveries contradicted them. It is the willingness to forgo the old and accept the new that science and civilisation make progress.

Cosmology is the study of the origin and fate of the universe. It is a subject in religion as well as in the scientific field of astrophysics. Throughout history, people have lived in different kinds of universes. Edward Harrison, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Massachusetts wrote, "Cosmology and society are intimately related. Where there is a society, there is a universe, and where there is a universe, there is a society of thinking individuals. Each universe shapes the history and directs the destiny of its society."

Good science

The old concept of the unchanging steady-state universe was popular in great empires that have gone into decline. In such societies the privileged citizens desire the perpetuity of past glory.

Dennis Sciama who was the PhD supervisor of Stephen Hawking at Cambridge had this to say, "I must add that for me the loss of the steady-state theory has been a cause of great sadness. The steady-state theory has a sweep and beauty that for some unaccountable reason the architect of the universe appears to have overlooked. The universe is in fact a botched job, but I suppose we shall have to make the best of it."

We must move on however attractive the past was. Otherwise the progress of civilisation is in jeopardy.

Religion views problems as indication of failure while science takes problems as challenges. Thomas Kuhn said good science not only has to be doable but has to keep creating new problems.

Michael Ruse, a professor of philosophy at Florida State University explains, if you solve a problem today but have two more to solve tomorrow, that is good science. A good scientist is not one who manages to solve a problem, but that the problem he solved opens up many more.

Opening minds

The Reformation and Renaissance in the 15th century marked the time when Western science emerged from its dark Medieval period. It's no coincidence that the rapid progress that led to today's advanced technological society of the West started with the people, especially the religious authorities, opening up their minds to science which had then flourished in the East.

Edward Harrison pointed out in his book Cosmology, the science of the universe that: "We are all indebted to the Islamic Empire for its preservation and transmission of ancient knowledge that ultimately awakened Europe." He further wrote, "Exciting knowledge from Arab lands dispersed the darkness of the Early Middle Ages."

The opening up of Western religion to science is spectacularly illustrated by the life of Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966) of Belgium. Lemaitre was ordained as a priest at 28. He went on to receive a PhD from the MIT at 33. Today his Friedmann-Lemaitre equations which he derived from Einstein's general relativity are indispensable tools in the study of cosmology.

Others like John Polkinghorne continue to keep the changing attitude in the Church in pace. Polkinghorne took his PhD in physics at Cambridge and later became professor of mathematical physics there in the early 1980s. He then gave up his post to take up theological study and became a priest in the Anglican Church.

Changing trend

Today the situation on the attitudes towards science and religion has reversed between the East and West. In the 16th century the intolerant attitude of Western Christianity led to the burning of William Tyndale at the stake for translating the Bible into English. In the 21st in some parts of the East, people still face restrictions in talking about religion. The transformation of attitudes has been amazing.

The East is now lagging far behind in the quest for scientific knowledge and technology. This is starkly illustrated by the fact that without oil the entire exports of the whole Middle East region add up to no more than those of Finland, a country of just five million and not particularly noted for industrial prowess in the West.

Eastern civilisation is steep with religious traditions. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and many others thrive across the land. It is certainly not religion per se that hinders us from catching up with the West.

In his book What went wrong: Western impact and Middle Eastern response, Bernard Lewis, a top scholar of the Islamic world at Princeton wrote, "If Islam is an obstacle to freedom, to science, to economic development, how is it that Muslim society in the past was a pioneer in all three?"

If we hope not to be mere spectators but active participants in influencing the course of civilisation we will have to change our attitude. Not that we have to embrace science while discarding religion, but to view both with an open mind.

CY THAM is a postdoctoral research associate in astrophysics, University of Cambridge.