The Modern World - The Twentieth Century

Thanks to the internal combustion engine in 1903 the Wright brothers make the first powered flight by a heavier than air machine. If the industrial age was the Coal Age, the 20th century is the Oil Age, as irreplaceable natural resources are consumed as never before on the altar of scientific and industrial progress. It is full-speed ahead to material prosperity with little thought of the consequences.

Science affects art, and art the thought of science. The 'Impressionist' movement of the 1900s is based upon the precise analysis of light and colour to give a relative view of an object - not a 'painting as photograph'. Reality is dependent on the observer, not the observed. These ideas are soon reflected in Einstein‘s work on relativity in science. Now nothing is thought as absolute and immutable, it all depends on how you look at things - 'E=mc²', 'Nothing is real'. Newton's ordered world of perfect laws was modified forever through a prism of thought. As Einstein himself famously said to a fellow passenger, 'what time does Oxford get to this train?'

Europeans and Americans use their superior technology to dominate the world economically and politically, and when their Empires began to crumble in the mid century all countries see the acquisition of modern science and technology as vital for their survival - not to have them means dominance by those who do. Science is applied in the two World Wars to produce rockets, atom bombs, synthetic oil and fertilizers, drugs like penicillin, and a whole range of products to help produce victory. In peacetime this mass production mutates to became commercial rivalry for the favour of consumers. Science becomes aimed at developing products to sell - not because they are needed but because they make money. The Sony Walkman is a prime example of this. No one needs them - but they sell, and this alone justifies the existence of the product in a materialist society.

By 1960 the ballistic missile and the atom bomb have given humanity the power to destroy the planet several times over - all at the press of a button.

Space research becomes a spin-off of the Cold War ideological battle between capitalism and communism. Capitalism will win because it has better applied science and technology, as shown by superior computer systems and consumer goods. In 1960 presidential candidate Kennedy refers to a 'missile gap' between the USA and the USSR, saying that it is more important than America being ahead of the USSR in colour TV. He is partly wrong, as communism will collapse in the 1980s, unable to compete with western consumerism provided by a commercially innovative science. The Cold War is a war of applied science and technology for hearts and minds - while ordinary people wanted better colour TV.

In politics, women and ethnic minorities are emancipated in this world of freer hi-technology thought. Although brief flirtations with communist and fascists totalitarian thought between 1920 and 1980 attempt to turn the clock back, freedom of thought survives and leads to a decline of religion - so much so that faith in science has been called 'The New Religion'. In advanced societies there is an outcry when medical science fails to deliver the high expectations of life people now place on it, while in the developing world millions die from diseases it costs a few pence to cure or prevent. People expect a cure to HIV soon to be discovered, rather than having to modify their behaviour to avoid it as they would have done in the Middle Ages. Restricted access to science and technology between developed and developing countries has brought us a world of 'haves' and 'have nots'.

Yet this is not the whole story. During and after the 1960s many turn back to religion, particularly Islam, and to alternative beliefs. Many observers see this as people's desire to regain the certainty they have lost in a world that they feel they no longer control thanks to ever developing science and technology.

The spin-offs of the struggle of the Hot and Cold Wars dominate people's lives at the end of the millennium. To make the Moon landings and communications satellites possible transistors had to replace valves in electrical circuits. At the end of the century microchips replace transistors and the only limit to computers seems to be the size needed to interact with humans via keyboards and screens. What is next for science? Artificial intelligence to replace humans? The upwardly spiraling world population, widespread pollution, the using up of finite natural resources and devastating industrial accidents like Chernobyl present science with challenges it must meet.

When the oil runs out will a New Dark Age envelop the world?