The last great threat to science comes from the woolly heads of the militant greens, the homeopaths and the rest of the new-age post-modern brigade who insist that “science” is to be accorded no more respect than, say, deconstructionism or Marxist literary analysis. The idea that science is just a matter of opinion, just another way of looking at the world, is dangerous and growing, among the Right as well as the Left and among the godless as much as the fundamentalist.

It is unlikely that these three threats will unite to undermine humanity’s greatest achievement. Science is too obviously “right” to be overthrown no­w. Moreover it is the only belief system we have found that says it is happy to be proved wrong: science’s greatest strength.Still, we should be on our guard.

What are the great mysteries that remain? There are many, and most seem to be susceptible to attack by science. Is life common or vanishingly rare in the universe? What is dark matter and its sinister cousin dark energy? How can we reconcile quantum physics and relativity? Are the laws of physics arbitrary or are they the only laws that can be? It is possible that, by using machines like the LHC, the planned space telescopes and the appliance of the world’s finest minds, these questions may be answered in my lifetime.

That is why we must persist. That is why, despite the fact that the money saved could undoubtedly feed countless Africans (though it wouldn’t actually be used for this purpose), we must continue to build the Large Hadron Collider, the Hubble Space Telescope and the other cathedrals to knowledge that are our era’s towering intellectual achievements. For without this sort of thing, we really are nothing.