Many people argue on one side that science is harmful to society, providing examples such as the atomic bomb, killing animals during experiments and eugenics in Nazism. However, I disagree that science threatens civilisation, because people harness science and hence should be responsible for their use of science. The nature of science is to benefit society, which I will discuss later.

To start off, science is invented by people for people. Consider the following scenario. A serial killer is captured by the police after his murder attempt. The police subsequently recover a machine gun used to kill the victim. Should the gun or the killer be sentenced? The answer is obvious, as it would be absurd to sentence the gun. In parallel motion, humans that harness science to harm the society should be blamed, and not science. Therefore, the many examples that are summoned to blame science for today's insecure society are basically non-examples. As such, instead of investigating the defects of science, we should dwell on the human character and examine its innate evil.

Back in the primitive times where people lived in caves, civilisations already began to attack each other with bones and sticks. These bloody battles already showed the savagery present in all humans, which is also discussed in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'. Indeed, it is the savagery in us that is a menace to civilisation. In addition, phenomena such as global warming are a dire consquence of human's over-exploitation of technology, best characterized in the astronomical number of plastic bags that came to waste and the light that is turned on every minute, every second. However, some people may argue that since we know the bloody desires harboured deep in our soul and the greedy nature of humans to over exploit scientific achievements, should science not be discovered to suppress these urges such that minimal damage to civilisation is achieved? To me, this argument serves to utterly avoid the harmful effects of science. We have always been told to face our problems and not to avoid it, which can be similarly applied in this case. Instead of banning the improvement of research, we should rather learn how to use science to suppress human's innate nature to exploit and to kill. In this way, we are truly facing the problem. Moreover, we can introduce awards to encourage people to better utilise science, which many countries are seeking to do now. Examples include the Shaw Prize which awards researchers who benefit the society in their fields of research.


Nevertheless, some passionate enviromentally friendly people may point out that progress in medical science has brought about the longetivity of human life and more births than before, thus using the earth's resources more rapidly than before and threatening the civilisation to a lack of resources. However, Soviet Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev once proposed the Kardashev Scale in 1964, which measures the technological advancement of a civilisation in terms of how much resource it can gather. According to this scale, as we advance in techonology, we can harness more resources, soon approaching Type I which can harness all the resources on Earth. As such, rather than minimizing science such that less resources are used, we should be more optimistic and use science and techonology to allow us to harness more energy for more people. In a nutshell, we should harness science effectively and not ban the progress of science.

Most researchers from past to present were not innately evil, if not to benefit the society in their research. For example, Albert Einstein hated his invention of nuclear energy which ultimately lead to the making of the atomic bomb. To begin with, his intention of this invention was to benefit society. Moreover, after the testing of the atomic bomb, the researchers involved in the Manhattan Project felt uneasy. For example, Robert Oppenheimer quoted, "I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds". This also supports that humans are responsible for the misuse of science and the blame should not be put on science. Hence, the nature of science is to benefit society. However, this rationale is upset by a few dark-hearted people who aim to destroy their only home planet.

In conclusion, science is not a menace to civilisation; rather, human's innate evil, savagery and the tendency to exploit causes them to wrongfully harness science such that these people become a menace to civilisation. Nonetheless, this does not mean that we should ban the progress of science but we should use science to suppress these urges and to construct a society where science is used rightfully.