The purpose of science is to understand all causes and all effects, so that when we know the operation of all parts of the universe, as much as possible, we will know everything to happen as a consequence. Our lack of facts is the only thing which clouds us. Newton had more than just a view of the universe; he was the first to realise that the universe is like a big music box playing a song, driven by the cogs of energy and gravity.
When we find out new facts, we may have the means thereby to create a better language. We know that language is composed of statements which are propositions of truth. When we say “I love you”, this means that we are stating that it is true that the utterer of this statement loves a person (or animal, or thing) identified by the grammatical object. When we use the word “or”, we see that it has the sense that it has in mathematical logic, so that mathematical logic is necessarily the perfection of language. The perfect language of the future will almost certainly be mathematical.
The universe is at any rate more easy to describe than we think because we're simply lacking the recognition of certain patterns that would help us to understand it. We can already see the beginnings of this in the links between particle physics and cosmology. When it was seen that the solar system is (roughly) similar to the atom in its structure, then we started to see similarity in other areas too: similarity between certain fractals, structures like coastlines and trees, from small to large, certain chemical reactions even resembling the patterns in nebulæ. The next time a subatomic particle is discovered, it may even resemble a galaxy.
Eventually, everything will be subordinate to science. What we don't know in terms of science will become scientifically understood once we know enough about it. Politics, art, economics, history, philosophy — all of these fields will eventually become thought of as science, in the same way that alchemy became chemistry and astrology became (apart from a few non-scientific people who still believe in it) astronomy.
The point is that science carries us forward, giving us things we didn't have before. Before science, we were unable to land on the moon. It simply wouldn't have been possible for Neil Armstrong to scuff up the lunar dust without the precepts of science. Whatever we have in the future will be due to the industry of our scientific method. We're finding new particles and new planets all the time, getting to the smaller and the bigger; and every time we inch closer to the goal of humanity.
Since all things will not just become science but also tend to science, we can see that domains such as fashion (the style of clothes and so on) are already making their way to this point. The fashions of today are much more practical than the ancient farthingales and corsets. The thong is a clear improvement over French knickers for the comfort of women, and presumably the tendency is towards nudity being generally accepted so that we will all be in ultimate clothing comfort — for ladies in warmer climates. Amongst men the direction is harder to discern, but appears to be trending towards some kind of body armour or spray on suit. Predicting the future is of course difficult, for we would need to invent it in order to predict it perfectly, but nobody would dare contend that fashion will not eventually become perfect nor that this perfection is already on the way.
Art, too, will become scienced, and its methods perfected. At the moment artificial intelligence experts are making programs that can beat a human at chess and even generate music which sounds like Chopin. Soon machines will be able to generate plays like Shakespeare plays, paintings like Van Gogh, and so on. Then for humans to be able to produce great masterpieces, it will simply be a matter of following the same rules that a computer followed to produce them — and following these rules is probably how the original artists managed to produce their great art in any case. There will be no new kinds of art at first, until we find the rules for creating new kinds of art, then anybody will be able to create a new style, like the Romantic style or the Art Deco style. Companies will be able to trademark entire genres, which will boost the economy.
One of the unfortunate side-effects of science is the point that either you know things or you don't, so that intelligent people are necessarily the leaders of mankind and the less intelligent people are less useful. Indeed, when we have the perfect science, it will be found that anybody who does not understand its precepts will be an obstacle to the very existence of humanity, because they will be preventing us from reaching our goal. What will be done at such a point is difficult to predict, though Mr. H. G. Wells has had some thoughts on the subject. Of course, the existence of the perfect science will mean that we can simply consult that to learn what to do — presumably in a painless and morally acceptable manner for everyone.
Another consequence of the perfect science will be that the entire universe itself can be made into paradise. Science, once it has assimilated morality and ethics, will be able to tell us how to achieve perfect happiness: at this point we can proceed to convert the whole universe into the perfect human and animal paradise. We may even call such a paradise a dream world, but this would of course be a misnomer since reality already is a dream. (You can't prove that you're not dreaming, or that anyone else exists.) Whilst this thought depresses some, you can't escape reality — that is to say, you can't escape a dream.
Perhaps the most exciting prospect is that biology too will become a science, and we'll have absolute control over the human organism. All of our currently metaphorical valves and diodes, which break down and malfunction, will be replaced with the futuristic equivalents of actual valves and diodes. This will have various effects. We'll all be able to see with the equivalent power of telescopes, seeing everything in the electromagnetic spectrum. We'll have infinite orgasms, and be able to turn them on and off at the flick of a switch. People with innie belly buttons will be able to convert them to outies, and vice versa. Hair will be redundant, replaced by holograms, and styles changable merely by the power of thought.
In summary, then, humanity is succeeding at its common sense task. There is more money in circulation now than ever before. There are more people than ever before, so we are also fulfilling the aims of our biological function, even though we're beginning to be able to transcend them. Of course, by transcend here I mean literally rise above them: that our human chosen values will exceed those set for us by the cogs of nature, so that we will be able to enter our new paradise, our new metropolis of humanity, where instead of bludgeoning one another with sticks and stones we will bludgeon only with the power of words.
by Sean B. Palmer