A biological century also raises the possibility of brave new approaches to preserving threatened tropical ecosystems. The biological century: coming to terms with risk in the life sciences I tend to believe that the 19th century was dominated mostly by the metaphors and technology of chemistry and mechanics. The 20th century has been dominated by electronics, and, of course, by physics, culminating in the incredible marriage of the atom and the rocket.
Many of these developments can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century, when James Clerk Maxwell formulated electrodynamics, which ultimately gave us electronics. In the middle of this century, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, setting the stage for a 21st century that will be dominated by biology.
The most extraordinary challenge ahead of us, however, will come from a brand-new field like humanistics. It will involve ' specialists in artificial intelligence, evolution, and computer languages, as well as brain scientists, biotechnicians etcs.
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