Knowledge Foundations
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Knowledge Foundations

5

Scientific Platform

Knowledge Foundations

It covers topics from fundamental sciences, engineering sciences, social sciences and the humanities, which draw on research from multiple disciplines and have effects that span numerous human, social and environmental spheres. These foundational topics will serve science — and ultimately society — for generations to come, with anticipated breakthroughs having wide potential impact across many different domains.

Associated Emerging Topics:

5.1

Emerging Topic

Complex Systems Science

Society consists of a wide variety of densely connected, interdependent systems. These networks of networks enable the flow of information, ideas, goods, services and money. In turn, this leads to huge benefits in the form of free media, open democracy, global trade and international finance.
5.2

Emerging Topic

Economics

Much of the progress in all fields of research over the next quarter-century will depend on the knowledge we gain, exploit and pass on to our children. But the future of education goes much wider: we need to find ways to exploit educational technology for individual, lifelong learning and we need to understand better how learning happens in the brain. Education is the lifeblood of humanity, and improving its delivery is central to all of our futures.
5.3

Emerging Topic

Science of the Origins of Life

Living organisms as we know them today are the extremely complex products of a long period of evolutionary change. Understanding the origins of life, therefore, can teach us a great deal about the possibilities inherent in biology and potential routes towards new medical insights, as well as providing unparalleled perspectives on cosmological history and our own place in the universe.
5.4

Emerging Topic

Synthetic Biology

Few questions have preoccupied scientists quite as much as where life itself originated. This is not a purely academic question, however: the science of the origins of life has implications ranging from the philosophical to the medical and environmental. Only if we understand where life comes from can we understand many aspects of our own existence. Research into this topic is highly diverse, bundles a range of fundamental sciences and has been the site of heated debates, but the future of the field looks likely to be increasingly multidisciplinary.
5.5

Emerging Topic

Archaeology

Breakthroughs in our understanding of biology and our ability to manipulate it are now making it possible to redesign nature. Driven by breakthroughs in our ability to read and re-engineer the genetic code, synthetic biology is on the cusp of transforming agriculture, medicine and manufacturing. The use cases for synthetic biology are likely to have a direct economic impact that runs into the trillions of dollars.

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5.1 - Complex Systems Science
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