science and perfect world

625 Words3 Pages
The visions of a perfect world have revealed throughout history, such as Plato’ Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia. The meaning of “a prefect world” is ambiguous and elusive. Equality, improved living standards, world peace and the absence of poverty and suffering might be commonly accepted features of this ideal world. As science advance to give humans more control of the world around us – from curing diseases and lengthening the human life span to inventing new fuels and engineering genetically superior crops -- it perhaps seem as if we have moved closer to attaining this perfect goal. Yet, our society is not built by science alone, so there are clear limitations if we relied solely on science. Admittedly, science has made the world a better place to live in. Modern medicines have more than doubled our life expectancy, and enabled children to be vaccinated against diseases which caused a massive rate of infant mortality before, whilst the population could not be fed without fertilizers and pesticides to increase yields and machinery to collect them efficiently. Moreover, science has greatly increased the ability of people to communicate. Telephones and email enable people on opposite sides of the world to stay in touch where before they would have had no possible way to do so. The Internet allows people unprecedented access to information – anything from sports scores to promotion advertisements. But there is a disparity between making the world a better place and creating a perfect world due to limitations to what science can achieve. While our material and basic needs could be met and satisfied, science is not capable of fulfilling our emotional and spiritual needs. Additionally, science cannot make up for the flaws in human nature such as greed and selfishness. Thus with these undesirable human characteristics, a perfect world will not be attained simply by
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