With great power comes great responsibility. The iconic adage that Uncle Ben repeated to Peter Parker —Spiderman, when he transformed into a superhero— in the emblematic science fiction film, also passed through the walls of the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao on Tuesday, where the XV edition of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ceremony was held. Saving the distances, another sort of heroes were honored there, those of science yesterday and today: researchers who have just shed light on the latest scientific advances and experts whose discoveries several decades ago have helped to build and understand the most immediate present. In an environment to honor the success of scientific excellence, the protagonists themselves vindicated the power of science and reason to make humanity progress and, in some way, endorsed the words of Uncle Ben with a call for responsibility, scientific and civic, in the face of the challenges posed by the future.
In the face of adversity, science and reason, repeated, each in their own way, some of the winners and personalities who raised their voices at the award ceremony of some awards that already point to being the prelude to the Nobel: 21 of the winners in previous editions ended up later receiving a Nobel. “Looking for evidence and using our reasoning faculty is the only reliable way to acquire knowledge and move towards a better world”, has defended the philosopher Peter Singer, who has received the prize in Humanities for his role in extending the foundations of ethics by extending moral consideration to other species. Also Doctor of Psychology from Harvard University, Steven Pinker, who has shared the prize with Singer in the same category, vindicated the ideals of the Enlightenment: “If we apply reason to the goal of cultivating human prosperity, we can achieve it gradually. My argument is that it is a humane and practicable alternative to destructive ideologies that seek meaning in strong leaders, national glory, tribal purity, or the struggle between racial and sexual identity groups.” Of Pinker, the prize jury has highlighted his achievements “in evolutionary cognitive psychology with extremely insightful analyzes of the conditions of human progress.” “His vision of this progress offers an optimistic perspective anchored in reason, science and humanism,” they added.
The president of the BBVA Foundation, Carlos Torres Vila, spoke along the same lines, extolling the power of knowledge as “the best instrument for understanding the world” and facing “major disruptions”, such as the global environmental crisis. “We need the best knowledge to make the best decisions”, pointed out Torres Vila. The president of the CSIC, Eloísa del Pino, has also assessed that, in a context of “climate and energy crisis, after a pandemic, with the return of extremist and intolerant ideologies”, the work of the laureates contributes to solving “problems such as the fight against disease, the conservation of biodiversity, the adequate distribution of wealth or the stability of democracy”. The prizes, which have an endowment of 400,000 euros and recognize high-impact contributions in eight categories of science, art and humanities, are awarded by a jury of international experts in each field. This year, there are 18 winners.
In a ceremony to praise science, there was also time to claim, as the prizes name, the goal of always crossing the frontiers of knowledge. Anne L’Huillier, awarded with the prize in Basic Sciences together with Paul Corkum and Ferenc Krausz, for achieving the observation of the movement of subatomic particles in the shortest time scale captured by the human being, defended the search for knowledge for the very “curiosity” of knowing: “Attosecond pulses were not invented or developed to solve a specific problem, they were discovered thanks to curiosity, and the future will tell us what results percussion they will have in society”.
It is not always clear what is in hand, how far a discovery can go or what it can be used for. Paleoclimatologist Ellen Thomas, winner of the Climate Change Award together with James Zachos for discovering a greenhouse effect from 56 million years ago that serves as an analogy for current global warming, did not expect to find that when she discovered it and did not count on it having practical relevance for society either, she admitted during her speech. “I was wrong, and I was wrong a lot. The insights gained by studying these worlds of the past, now lost, go a long way toward understanding our present and future world,” she stated. She and she insisted, as she explained in an interview in EL PAÍS, on the dangers of current global warming: “Climate change is not a problem for the Earth. To say that we must “save the Earth” is a great arrogance: the Earth will be fine, as it has been for hundreds of millions of years, but it is us, the humans, who will not be “.
science with ethics
Regarding the red lines in science, which also exist, the engineer Alberto Sangiovanni, winner of the Information and Communication Technology award for transforming the design of chips, now omnipresent in our lives, from an artisanal process to the automated industry, set them this way in his acceptance speech: “When it comes to conceiving ideas and bringing them to life, we must take ethics into account and make sure that our creations do not harm human beings or the environment. I am convinced that, in order to be solid, scientific and technical training cannot forget the humanities; many mistakes made in the development of technological systems could have been avoided if we had stopped to think about the scope of their consequences”.
Precisely, in the middle of the debate on the threat or potential risks of artificial intelligence (AI), the prize in Biology and Biomedicine went to the good work of AI in this field: the biochemist from the University of Washington, David Baker, and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, CEO and researcher, respectively, of the Google company DeepMind, have been awarded for deciphering the three-dimensional structure of all known proteins through AI systems. The finding has revolutionized modern biology, more than anyone could have imagined, Jumper admitted: “It is exciting to see every day how precise prediction of structures has expanded or accelerated the scope of science.”
In the area of Ecology and Conservation Biology, Susan C. Alberts, Jeanne Altmann and Marlene Zuk have been honored for their research in the behavioral and evolutionary ecology of animals, which has served to incorporate social behavior into species conservation plans. In Economics, Finance and Business Management, Timothy Besley, Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, for “transforming the political economy” by investigating how political institutions and processes shape economic policy, according to the jury. On the other hand, the composer Thomas Adès, has received the prize in Music and Opera for reinterpreting the Western musical tradition with works that reach diverse audiences.
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