cover image From Here to Infinity: 
A Vision for the Future of Science

From Here to Infinity: A Vision for the Future of Science

Martin Rees. Norton, $23.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-393-06307-3

Rees, Britain’s former astronomer royal and a scientist’s scientist, offers his thoughts on how science should navigate its ongoing interaction with culture, politics, and ethics in the 21st century. Rees’s major thesis is that scientists, politicians, and laypeople must engage in meaningful dialogue about how science should be deployed to address the century’s looming dangers: “the threats without enemies.” This list includes developing reliable energy sources, a burgeoning world population, climate change, diminishing biodiversity, the misuse and unintended consequences of gene manipulation, and the design of drugs that may alter human beings themselves. Rees offers no set-piece solutions, but instead suggests rational and achievable responses—some scientific, some sociological—that might ameliorate these potential dangers. He champions better funded universities and the idea that science should remain agnostic as to religion; he says that the benefits of globalization must be fairly shared, and, most intriguingly, “There are doors that science could open but which are best left closed.” There is enough hard science for this book (based on a series of lectures) to satisfy readers concerned with science’s future horizons, as well as a surfeit of wisdom on science and its role in society at large. Agent: George Lucas, InkWell Management. (June)