With great power comes great responsibility. The iconic saying Uncle Ben repeated to Peter Parker in the iconic sci-fi film – Spiderman as he turned into a superhero – also passed through the walls of Bilbao’s Euskalduna Palace on Tuesday, where the XV. award ceremony took place. BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Awards Edition. To save the distances, heroes of a different kind 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 helped build the most immediate present and to understand. In an environment that celebrated the success of scientific excellence, the protagonists themselves defended the power of science and reason to advance humanity, and in some ways supported Uncle Ben’s words with a call for scientific and civic responsibility in coping of the challenges that the future has in store for us.
In the face of adversity, science and sanity, some of the winners and personalities who raised their voices at the awards ceremony of some awards that already indicate that they could be the prelude to the Nobel Prize repeated themselves in their own way: 21 of the winners in the past The editions later received the Nobel Prize. “Looking for evidence and using our minds is the only reliable way to gain knowledge and work towards a better world,” defended philosopher Peter Singer, who won the prize in the humanities for his work on expanding the foundations of ethics extend moral consideration to other ways. Harvard Doctor of Psychology Steven Pinker, who shared the award with Singer in the same category, also defended Enlightenment ideals: “If we pursue the goal of cultivating human prosperity with reason, we can achieve it gradually.” My argument is that it is a humane and viable alternative to destructive ideologies that make sense of strong leaders, national glory, tribal purity, or the struggle between racial and sexual identity groups.” Psychology with most insightful analyzes of the conditions of human progress”. “His vision of this progress offers an optimistic perspective grounded in reason, science and humanism,” they added.
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BBVA Foundation President Carlos Torres Vila echoed the same sentiments, praising the power of knowledge as “the best tool to understand the world” and facing “major disruptions” like the global environmental crisis. “We need the best knowledge to make the best decisions,” emphasized Torres Vila. The President of the CSIC, Eloísa del Pino, has also noted that in the context of the “climate and energy crisis, post-pandemic, with the return of extremist and intolerant ideologies”, the work of the winners contributes to solving “issues such as …” like the fight against disease, the preservation of biodiversity, the fair distribution of wealth or the stability of democracy”. The prizes, worth 400,000 euros, honor outstanding contributions in eight categories from science, art and humanities and are awarded by a jury of international experts in the respective fields. This year there are 18 winners.
In a ceremony to honor science, there was also time – as the prizes call it – to profess the goal of always pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Anne L’Huillier, who shared the basic science prize with Paul Corkum and Ferenc Krausz for observing the motion of subatomic particles in the shortest human-recorded timescale, defended the search for knowledge on her own. Curiosity” to know: “Attosecond pulses were not invented or developed to solve a specific problem, they were discovered out of curiosity and the future will tell us what impact they will have on society.”
It is not always clear what is involved, how far a discovery can go, or what it can be used for. Paleoclimatologist Ellen Thomas, winner of the Climate Change Award along with James Zachos for discovering a 56-million-year-old greenhouse effect that serves as an analogy to current global warming, didn’t expect it when she discovered it, nor did it expect it to be of practical relevance to society, he acknowledged in his speech. “I was wrong, and I was very wrong. “The knowledge gained through the study of these lost worlds of the past greatly contributes to the understanding of our present and future world,” he explained. And, as he explained in an interview in EL PAÍS, he emphasized the dangers of the 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, just as it has been for hundreds of millions of years, but we, humans, will not be.”
science with ethics
Regarding the red lines in science that also exist, the engineer Alberto Sangiovanni, winner of the Information and Communication Technology prize, for transforming the design of chips that are now ubiquitous in our lives, from a traditional process to automated industry, he defined them as such. In his acceptance speech he said: “When it comes to conceiving ideas and turning them into reality, we must consider ethics and ensure that our creations do not harm people or the environment.” I I am convinced that in order to be solid, scientific and technical education must not neglect the humanities; Many mistakes in the development of technical systems could have been avoided if we had thought about the extent of their consequences.”
Right in the middle of the debate about the threat or potential risks of artificial intelligence (AI), the award in Biology and Biomedicine went to the fine work of AI in the field: University of Washington biochemists David Baker and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper , CEO and researcher respectively of the Google company DeepMind, have been awarded for decoding the three-dimensional structure of all known proteins by AI systems. The finding has revolutionized modern biology more than anyone could have imagined, Jumper admitted: “It’s exciting every day to see how the precise prediction of structures has expanded or accelerated the scope of science.”
In the Ecology and Conservation Biology category, Susan C. Alberts, Jeanne Altmann, and Marlene Zuk were recognized for their research on the behavioral and evolutionary ecology of animals that has helped integrate social behavior into management plans. protection of species. In the fields of economics, finance and corporate governance, Timothy Besley, Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini received “the transformation of political economy” by examining how political institutions and processes shape economic policy, according to the jury. On the other hand, the composer Thomas Adès received the Music and Opera Prize for his reinterpretation of the Western musical tradition with works that reach a diverse audience.
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