Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

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    If you were an alien from Mars visiting earth in the year 1500 and viewed all the great civilizations, which would you think would eventually dominate the word? The answer would be easy: any civilization but the European one.
    In the east, you would see the great Chinese civilization, which had lasted for millennia. The long list of inventions pioneered by the Chinese is without parallel: paper, the printing press, gunpowder, the compass, etc. Its scientists arethe best on the planet. Its government is unified and the mainland is at peace.
    In the south, you have the Ottoman Empire, which came within a hair-breadth of overrunning Europe. The great Muslim civilization invented algebra, produced advances in optics and physics, and named the stars. Art and science flourish. Its great armies face no credible opposition. Istanbul is one of the world’s great centers for scientific learning.
    Then you have the pitiful European countries, which are racked by religious fundamentalism, witch trials, and the Inquisition. Western Europe, in precipitous decline for a thousand years since the collapse of the Roman Empire, is so backward that it is a net importer of technology. It is a medieval black hole. Most of the knowledge of the Roman Empire has long since vanished, replaced by stifling religious dogma. Opposition or dissent is frequently met with torture or worse. Moreover, the city-states of Europe are constantly at war with one another.
    So what happened?
    Both the great Chinese and Ottoman empires are entering a 500-year-period of technological stagnation, while Europe is beginning an unprecedented embrace of science and technology.
    Beginning in 1405, the Yongle emperor of China ordered a massive naval armada, the largest the world had ever seen, to explore the world. (The three puny naval ships of Columbus would have fit nicely on the deck of just one of these colossal vessels.) Seven massive expeditions were launched, each larger than the previous one. This fleet sailed around the coast of Southeast Asia and reached Africa, Madagascar, and perhaps even beyond that. The fleet brought back a rich bounty of goods, delicacies, and exotic animals from the far reaches of the earth. There are remarkable ancient woodcuts of African giraffes being paraded at a Ming Dynasty zoo.
    But the rulers of China were also disappointed. Was that all there was? Where were the great armies that could rival the Chinese? Were exotic foods and strange animals all that the rest of the world could offer? Losing interest, the subsequent rulers of China let their great naval fleet decay and eventually burn. China gradually isolated itself from the outside world, stagnating as the world lunged forward.
    A similar attitude settled in the Ottoman Empire. Having conqueredmost of the world they knew, the Ottomans turned inward, into religious fundamentalism and centuries of stagnation. Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia, has said, “ The great Islamic civilization went into decline when Muslim scholars interpreted knowledge acquisition, as enjoined by the Qur’an, to mean only knowledge of religion, and that other knowledge was un-Islamic. As a result, Muslims gave up the study of science, mathematics, medicine, and other so-called worldly disciplines. Instead, they spent much time debating on Islamic teachings and interpretations, on Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic practices, which led to a breakup of the Ummah and the founding of numerous sects, cults, and schools.”
    In Europe, however, a great awakening was beginning. Trade brought in fresh, revolutionary ideas, accelerated by Gutenberg’s printing press. The power of the Church began to weaken after a millennium of domination. The universities slowly turned their attention away from interpreting obscure passages of the Bible to applying the physics of Newton and the chemistry of Dalton and others. Historian Paul Kennedy of Yale adds one more factor to the meteoric rise of Europe: the constant state of war between nearly equal European powers, none of which could ever dominate the Continent. Monarchs, constantly at war with one another, funded science and engineering to further their territorial ambitions. Science was not just an academic exercise but a way to create new weapons and new avenues of wealth.
    Soon, the rise of science and technology in Europe began to weaken the power of China and the Ottoman Empire. The Muslim civilization, which had prospered for