Isaac Asimov Quotes
The dangers that face the world can, every one of them, be traced back to science. The salvations that may save the world will, every one of them, be traced back to science.
Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's New Guide to Science. Basic Books, 1984.
Kahn was the leading scientist behind the Pakistan nuclear weapons program. However, he then was personally involved in not only selling nuclear secrets to other counties but to terrorists as well. He personally enriched himself while enabling nuclear proliferation in the world. The article was an expose of his dishonest and illegal activities. The Pakistan government was in a bind. Kahn was a national hero, the only Pakistani who had ever won the Nobel Prize in a Scientific Field. Convicted and then pardoned by the President, but he was put under house arrest and surveillance and banned from any activity involving technical assistance to others. Kahn’s religious bigotry towards Hindus as disclosed by his letter made him even more of an international pariah. See {586385} for other attacks on his critics.
He was observing that from a public policy point of view, it is very difficult to target research funds on projects that will have practical innovations because so many come from basic research or research in an entirely different field of science.
While this is generally true, from the scientific point of view, it is not quite right. The layman and most engineers believe that scientists discover things that exist. Although they do most of the time, breakthrough’s of the last century have for example discovered new chemical elements, but there are a few that science has CREATED—they exist nowhere in nature. Scientists are beginning to develop new life forms as well as discovering already existing ones. For over a century now the science of metallurgy has created thousands of alloys that did not previously exist.
Although a conservative Republican, he and most other CEOs of modern companies do not denigrate and ignore science the way many other conservatives have done over the years.
Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.
