Cool cat courtesy of modern chemistry

Chemistry, like all science and technology, has an ambivalent status in society today. On the one hand, it is acknowledged that it has enabled man to survive and flourish on our overcrowded planet. Men and women in advanced industrial nations are using chemistry to defend and extend the material benefits that derive from increasing human predominance over the rest of nature. At the same time, the people of less developed countries are striving after the products of modern chemistry that can make their lives more healthy, comfortable and productive.

And yet, there are many who decry chemistry as the cause of undesirable qualities of modern life. In an explosion of irrational compulsion to condemn those very intellectual, scientific and technological endeavours that have enabled modern man to rise from savagery, chemistry has been blamed for all manner of treachery against the quality of life.

But denial of the humane value of scientific knowledge and obstacles to its wise use for the benefit of mankind are by no means unique to our times. History is replete with records of opposition to scientific inquiry and the introduction of new technologies that challenged old beliefs, threatened established institutions and changed patterns of life.