Is Scientific Progress affecting Social Change? Let’s find out…

Science has always been a pet subject, peaking my interests and pushing me to find answers to all my burning questions. Answers about the cosmos to the nitty-gritties of a single grain of sand, science is ever-knowing. Being in the Museum Capital, I got my notebook, wore my comfy shoes and set out…
Upon visiting the famous Science museum in South Kensington, I found that progress has many definitions. In the museum, I spent a lot of time carefully understanding the exhibits, particularly focusing on the Art of Innovation, Mathematics and Information Age exhibitions. All of this to understand what scientific progress is and how does it contribute to social change.
Though, what is Progress?
Well, the Cambridge Dictionary defines progress as — “movement to an improved or more developed state, or to a forward position” — that’s quite simple isn’t it?!
But after spending a good part of a day touring these exhibitions, I understood that progress can be defined in a many ways, but still circle back to the original concept, and realised how it interacts with the change of society that we live in. Therefore, my definitions are quite long and are in analysis of some of the stories illustrated in the exhibitions.
- Progress is the growth of new Ideas, ideologies & theories and the adoption and social acceptance of said ideas.
- Progress is finding solutions to problems through years and years of experimenting with the help of scientists, artists and fellow researchers.
- Progress is reinventing the way we do things.
- Progress is the willingness to question our relationship with our environment and looking beyond new sights, knowledge & resources.
If progress is venturing into a path no one has gone before, Innovation is taking the progress and finding ways to prove and perfect it.
We have been taught that innovation is progressive, and therefore it changes our perspectives towards its experience. In my opinion, progress and innovation are two sides of the same coin, where there’s progress, there’s innovation. And after going through the stories of innovation through ages here are a few ways that the experience of innovation has changed our perspective towards everyday life. Every change in this world comes with its own positive and negative pointers:-
The positive ways our perspective has changed are:
- The newer ways of doing things have brought in ease in daily life, saving time, money and other resources.
- Through progressive innovation we have become a global community, connected to each other through ways of instant communication
- There is a constant need to innovate as we have linked it with development, therefore making us hopeful & motivated to do better and go beyond in our ventures.
- This era of progressive innovation has completely changed the way we think.
- Speaking from a more business aspect, today’s organisations are willing to risk everything in the name of innovation.
The negative ways our perspective has changed are:
- There is an increase in problem creation.
- With the ease of newer products being innovated and new features being introduced, humans seem to be getting lazier. We completely rely on machines to do the simplest of the chores to be done.
- There is information overload as we constantly try to discover new information.
- A rise in competition to be the best.
Many hours can be spent discussing about scientific progress and social change, especially after visiting the Science Museum. It is vast and full of answers for the curious, and filled to the brim for evolution enthusiasts. Finishing the museum all in a day is a herculean task, but the best part about that is that you’ll get to go to the gift shop every time you’re there!
