Science

Shortly after building the first reflecting telescope, Sir Isaac Newton wrote to a disgruntled colleague: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Whether Newton was extremely eloquent or rather short, the sentiment remains – our knowledge has accumulated in small increments over the centuries thanks to the tireless work of dedicated individuals who sought to add to the betterment of mankind by learning from those who preceded them.

Fair enough, they didn’t always get it quite right. Scientists, like the rest of us, carry some crazy ideas and fall victim to their own superstition. Newton himself practised alchemy, had a strange view of Christianity and most of his written work dealt with the occult. Thankfully, his hobby was to explain the forces of the universe in his spare time. When describing Newton, the economist John Maynard Keynes said “He was not the first of the Age of Reason: He was the last of the magicians.”

Reason, observation and deduction are the foundation of the scientific method. These elements do not lead to certainty, but thrive on a continual cycle of uncertainty through constructive criticism and argument. When Socrates was told by the Oracle he was the wisest man in Greece, he disputed the claim by comparing himself with the great philosophers and artists in Athens at the time. He discovered, paradoxically, that he was indeed the wisest amongst his contemporaries because he was the only person certain of his own ignorance. Questions – not answers – are the tools of the scientist.

Natural selection needs a hand sometimes.

While Socrates was no scientist, the Ancient Greeks had their fair share of brainpower; through observation and reason Pythagoras and Archimedes helped deduce the laws of the natural world. The knowledge of such ‘giants’ was adopted by the Romans; preserved by the Arabs who combined it with science from India and China; translated by medieval monks in Islamic Spain; and finally brought back to Europe just in time for the Renaissance, the printing press and the Inquisition.

Being a scientist – or natural philosopher – was a risky business in the 17th Century. In a quest to understand god and the universe, men like Galileo had to juggle their new ideas, their faith and the very real threat of excommunication or worse.* Thankfully, some European scientists were spared the rack and the stake, allowing doubt and inquiry to run rampant during the Enlightenment; leading to what we call empiricism – the testing of hypotheses through repeated experiment.

New technology brought about by the Industrial Revolution saw a rapid expansion in the fields of science and brought about countless new discoveries (mainly brewing-related). To highlight the benefits of science in recent times would be redundant, however be sure that a scientist makes no discovery because she is certain – only because she asked the question. This is how peer-reviewed literature works and why it is so important to our understanding. Hypotheses are formulated, experiments are conducted, theories are tested and consensus is made based on the most probable outcome; that is all we have.

Geologists, astronomers, physicists, chemists and biologists demonstrate that humans are no longer the central character in a six thousand year old desert fable. We are liberated from the shackles of certainty and are able to celebrate that we are a miniscule scattering of atoms in a limitless universe, brought together for a brief moment in time, only to be scattered again once more. What for you ask? To take pleasure in the fact we can contribute a few pages to a cosmic book that has hardly been written.

* To be fair, the Catholic church apologised for this incident and confirmed that Galileo’s model of the solar system was indeed correct…in 1992.

Beer

For the precious remaining years before an ‘enthusiastic hobby’ becomes ‘rampant alcoholism’, allow me to celebrate the ambrosial tonic that is beer. Few things on earth are so simple to make, yet so wondrous in their effect. Beer sustains societies, defines nations and brings people together. With the dawn of the amber liquid, grain was no longer doomed as a nutritious, staple food source; it became the delicious, irresponsible and migraine-inducing miracle it was destined to be.

Before we continue, we need to talk about how beer is made. Brewing is a complicated process that has evolved over countless generations and requires expert skill. The process involves the following:

1. Fill a container with malted barley, hops, water and yeast
2. Wait

In summary, yeast is the real hero of beer-making. It transforms sugar into a living, breathing, bubbly friend (carbon dioxide) that you eventually spend way too much time with (alcohol).

Since there was farming, there was beer and since there was beer, there was civilisation. In the Zagros Mountains of modern Iran, chemical tests on clay vessels show barley was being used for brewing more than 5,000 years ago.* In China, a similar process was used to make booze from cooked rice over 7,000 years ago! Thankfully, wild yeast in the air can ferment pretty much anything that contains carbohydrates. We can only thank the brave soul who decided – presumably for gags – to down that first tepid bowl of chunky, micro-organism-ridden bread water.

"Have a go bro, this shit will pickle your insides."**

By the middle ages, ale was commonplace from Britain to Poland and was usually brewed at home. At a time when the Catholic Church was its most corrupt and cruel, it demonstrated its one and only redeeming characteristic – commercial beer production. Carolingian Abbotts first used hops in the 9th Century; which gave beer a longer shelf-life and its unique taste. The world’s oldest surviving brewery, in fact, is an abbey in Weihenstephan, Bavaria, which opened its doors in 1040. Even today, the best beer in the world is produced by Belgian Trappist monks.

The industrial revolution lead to what we would recognise today as beer, the development of the thermometer and hydrometer being major steps in improving the quality of mass-produced product. In 1856, Louis Pasteur discovered of the role of yeast in fermentation, helping to protect the brewing process from unwanted micro-organisms. In recent decades, there has been a shift from the fruitier, cloudier varieties (ales) to clearer, crisper beers (lagers) in conjunction with the use of pasteurisation and artificial carbonation. Most popular tap (crap) beers today are lagers.

The importance of beer to our civilisation cannot be exaggerated. For the medieval peasant, ale was not only sustenance for hours of toil in the field; the brewing process made it a darn sight safer to drink than the water of the day. In contrast, modern brewing methods have brought this idea full circle, with beer beginning to taste more and more like water. Next time you order a beer, try the darkest, scariest looking one you can find and imagine a world where that was the closest thing you could get to Mount Franklin. Hallelujah.

* The effects must have been a success. Only a few thousand years later, Sumerians were worshipping Ninkasi, the Brewery Goddess with useful recipes.

** Worst Mummification Joke 2011 nominee right there.