Late night thoughts on listening to Mahler’s ninth

My main theme in the book, which is something I’ve discussed for a number of years in other fora, is that we are in a state where science has greater potential benefits, but greater potential downsides. And indeed, in our evermore interconnected world, there’s a genuine risk of global catastrophes, which could arise through our collective actions, as we’re seeing in the concerns about climate change and loss of biodiversity. But it could also arise from an engineered pandemic, for instance, which could be generated by ill-intended applications of biology.

I’m talking really here in the book about what I’m trying to do, that is to measure up how much progress we have made with how much progress could be made or is ever likely to be made

Martin Rees explains how science might save us – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists