Has science caused more problems than it has solved?

Absolutely not. The life expectancy of humans has increased by up to 30 years in developed countries thanks to scientific achievement. It has introduced countless time saving devices, rapidly expended our knowledge, and lead to increased recreational time for people to relax and enjoy their lives more. I fail to see any significant drawback. Of course if you feel this way you can live with the Amish.

No.

Unlike some people, I’m an unashamed modernist who believes that a more dangerous, yet super advanced civilization is much better than an idealized, Gaia-worshiping, pastoral pipe dream.

I can think of some pretty big negatives such as Nuclear weapons, Biological and Chemical weapons, certain types of pollution and the introduction of invader species that decimate local ecosystems, but on the whole, we’re still much better off than we were I believe. Things like advancement in medicine, communication, education, transportation etc far outweigh the bad.

I don’t even understand how science is capable of “causing” problems.

The scientific method exists to give us a better understanding of the natural world. Science describes the world around us. The goal of science is not to create or destroy anything; rather, the purpose and function of science is to help us understand what already exists.

Blaming science for the actions that people choose to take with the knowledge they have misses the point entirely.

@nikipedia, that’s actually an excellent point I didn’t even think of. Good work.

@nikipedia GA. People have always done good and evil with whatever tools are available to them.

Science doesn’t kill people. People kill people.

science…good or bad. well that IS a great question. as far as making life more comfortable ,it has done that alright. if you can afford the things that do so.
treating disease? thats a 50–50. yes polio is almost eliminated as an example… but MS,cancers, heart diseases,skin disorders(psoraisis for example.it’s not even know what causes it yet) leave a lot to be desired.
enviormental science? thats a wash because even when we figure out what to do about something we cant get people to do it.
and then theres science in religion. the big bang theory. or God. not touching that one. thats screwed up more people than china has rice.
science and energy….wind power good. thousand of windmills across our beautiful landscapes? bad. do they have to be that big? and why cant they put them offshore instead of polluting the ocean with oil rigs?
solar power…thats good. coming up with enough solar power for a planet with unbridled population explosions? bad.
nuclear energy??? good. crazy s.o.b.‘s making bombs with the stuff and even crazier s.o.b.‘s stealing the bombs? bad.

i totally agre with violet. science good. what people do with it? bad.

If science caused more problems than it solved, we’d probably be dead now.

We need science to protect us when an Asteriod or comet strikes the earth… the suns going to be a red dwarf in a few billion years so we need to be ready…. we don’t want to have our contributions to society wasted by us all dying out now do we?

a few billion years…. any idea how far away the human race will have to be to avoid being vaporized when the sun begins to be a red dwarf or super nova? asteroids hitting the earth are the least of our problems.
we have got to be longggggg goneee not to far in the future simply because the earth will not be able to supply humans with food and fresh water the way we use it up now. to survive we will have to leave the universe as we know it.
light yrs away. unless there really is “warp drive ” out there,the human race has a definite expiration date.

Hmmmm…... I smell a zealot. May I permitted to answer your question with a question? Has religion caused more problems than it has solved?

science and technology has definitely made life more efficient for mankind. our living standards compared to the last 200 years has vastly improved but i reckon it has been a main factor to the deterioration of our culture. everything now is so readily available that nothing is sacred anymore, we live in a more cluttered world. a world with 4000+ advertisements a day, portable jukeboxes with 30,000+ songs! what the hell. at least religion addresses spiritual questions in our lives, like death. we live in a more integrated (communication wise, society itself has disintegrated like crazy, i only know 3 of my neighbours and ive lived at the same address for over 10 years) and informed world but at the cost of culture.

but then again i wouldnt have it any other way. im content to how i live my life

same here. when i grew up you knew everybody in the neighborhood. literally. now if you say hi to sombody the walk faster. if you smile at somebody they think your “special needs”.
as far as bringing the world closer the internet has succeeded immensely.
but it’s failed miserably at bringing people face to face. and no…im not counting webcams/skype.

I would say that Science (applied science, perhaps?) has made it possible for us to solve some of our older problems. Being what we are, that means that we move on to or even invent others.
I am reminded of the way that culture is a product of surplus.

One could argue that the knowledge and understanding gained via science has enabled people to “solve problems”, and in doing so, we have created new ones. I believe that was the intent of the original Asker’s statement. But obviously if we created more problems than we solved, we wouldn’t last long. So far, I see a strong argument for us solving more problems than we’ve created (from the perspective of human perpetuation and survival), but I can also see that this trend could be reversed in my lifetime. I’ve heard that the expected human lifespan is for the first time shorter than the previous generation, indicating a peak, and major problems.

I think plastic will be rembered as the folly of the last century.

It’s not science which causes the problems, it’s the uses to which humans put science. Science is simply the most effective way to learn more about our universe. What we DO with that knwledge is something else again.

There are two possible questions here. The one you probably mean is whether technology has created more problems than it has solved. But it is also worth asking if science has ruined our way of looking at the world. Is there such a thing as knowing too much? Might there be value in ignoring the man behind the curtain? John Keats wrote complaining about Newton’s use of prisms to reveal the nature of ligh, likening it to unweaving the rainbow:

From John Keats’ (1795–1821) Lamia, part II.
... Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.

As for technology, Western nations are living in a way that is unsustainable. Something has got to give. Additionally, as some have pointed out, our consumer life style has isolated us from our neighbors and from nature. The rate of psychological depression has gotten to a level that many consider epidemic. We are going through a mass extinction comparable to that of the dinosaurs. There will come a time of reckoning and maybe we will be able to alter our use of technology to create a more natural and humane environment.

You better be freaking joking.

Science yields knowledge. That knowledge has enabled us to extended our life spans by decades. To eradicate deadly diseases. To find cures for so many ailments. To find ways to make the blind see, make the deaf hear, and make mutes speak. To find ways to cultivate crops efficiently enough to feed billions, diminishing mass starvation and preventing resource wars. To resolve existing wars. Scientific knowledge has saved millions of lives from hundreds of threats.

Is there a single problem in the world that is to blame on science?

On the subject of nuclear weapons, I’d like to remark that as horrible as they are, they did end the Second World War, and their looming threat kept the Cold War cold.

@LostInParadise
“But it is also worth asking if science has ruined our way of looking at the world.”
I would beg to differ. It has repaired our way of looking at the world. At last.

We should never have indulged in exalting mystery. There is no virtue in not knowing something. To revere mystery is only to revere one’s own ignorance.

If unraveling the mystery of the rainbow made it lose its magnificence to Keats, for putting it in the category of “ordinary” things as opposed to the category of inexplicable magic, then there was something very wrong with the way Keats looked at the world.
The “magic” category is an empty set. It always was an empty set. There is an answer to every question. Our not knowing the answer does not make the question an inherently different kind of question from the ones already answered. If an explained rainbow is in the category of “common things” now, then everything in the cosmos rightfully belongs to the category of “common things”.

If Keats could only find poetry in things he did not understand, then he literally made a living off his ignorance. And excuse the ad hominem, but that’s not the sort of man I would want to be.

I also think he’s wrong. Science has not made the world one bit more boring. On the contrary.
Science has expanded our imagination by light-years, literally. Before science, no one could have imagined portals, thinking machines, computer-generated pseudo-realities, planetary invasions, people exploring outer space, moon- or planet-sized buildings, solar-system-sized engineering projects, plagues of microscopic robots that devour everything…

Science only makes angels, haunts, gnomes and lamias seem bland by comparison.

Science is definitely the Apple on the tree or that which is released when Pandora’s box is opened. I can see how a person who believes in original sin might want to go back to a place where sin didn’t exist—thus stuffing science back out of sight.

Science is a process for learning about our world. We could no more stop using science than we could stop using our hearts. When we learn new things, we are able to use that knowledge to manipulate our environment. Without learning, we could not keep six or seven billion people alive on this planet.

So, really, when you think about it, the alternative to science is death. Of all of us. Maybe you like that outcome, but personally I think that anyone who understood what science is couldn’t even ask this question.

@LostInParadise If by ‘unsustainable’ you mean ‘living the exact same way regardless of what happens’ then yes. But predictions of doom are as commonplace as they are wrong. Science once assured us that we would be a) living in a world frozen by global cooling and b) famine would be everywhere because of a population boom. These predictions were made by extrapolating current trends into the future until it looked like the trends had no future.

But it doesn’t work like that. We adapt. We change.

Mostly through: science.

As people have pointed out, science is completely neutral. What is done with science (that is to say technology, the how to science’s what) is, on balance good, by any reasonable definition of good.

Sometimes there are unintended consequences to technology and we either cope with them or look for ways to mitigate against or remove them. In only the rarest cases are the byproducts of a technology simply not worth it. In those cases we generally abandon the technology or limit its use to areas where it is truly so effective that it is necessary.

Incidentally, I believe the only feasible solution to any problem that’s a result of science is more science.

@Fyrius: you’re awesome.

Why, thank you.

Our planet is finite. There is only so much energy, fresh water and land to go around. At some point people will have to say Enough! I can’t imagine the whole world living at the current standard of the U.S.

@LostInParadise That is my point. If there is zero innovation and all the world’s people suddenly consume at the same rate as the average American then it is quite likely, though not completely certain that it would be unsustainable. But that’s not what is going to happen.

No science solved far more problems than it has caused, I’d say the ratio is 999 solutions and 1 problem.