English · Chapter 15
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
Vladimir Keilis-Borok (1921-2013) was a Russian seismologist and mathematical geophysicist. Born in Moscow, he spent most of his career in the Soviet and later Russian Academy of Sciences, where he founded the International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics. In his final years he worked at the University of California, Los Angeles. His life's work was the mathematical study of earthquakes and the search for reliable ways to predict them, and he also served as a scientific expert in the 1960 Geneva talks on detecting underground nuclear tests. In this essay, prescribed in Unit 4 of NEB Grade 11 Compulsory English, he speaks as a working scientist and defends fundamental research as the means by which humankind will survive.
Keilis-Borok writes as a scientist explaining to ordinary readers why the work of scientists matters to everyone. His central claim is stated in the title itself: scientific research is a token, that is, a sign and a guarantee, of humankind's survival. Research is not a luxury that a society pays for when it can afford it and drops when times are hard. It is a condition of staying alive.
The argument rests on the dangers that face the modern world. Humankind is threatened by natural disasters, of which earthquakes are the example nearest to the author's own work, by the problem of energy, by the degradation of the environment, and by disease. These problems are growing in scale, and the knowledge humanity already possesses is not enough to meet them. Only new knowledge, gained through continued basic research, can supply the tools that will be needed.
The author then explains what fundamental research really is. It is not the search for an immediate product or profit. It is driven by curiosity, by the scientist's desire to understand how nature works. Because of this, it does not move in a straight line. Science often advances by chance: a researcher sets out to answer one question and comes upon something quite different, and that unexpected finding may prove far more important than what was originally sought.