In the relatively recent past, man knew almost nothing about the world in which he lived. You should not assume that a person began to learn nature recently: gradually improving his knowledge, he learned to select only useful and edible plants, and adapted the surrounding landscape for his life. So is it possible to ask why people study nature?
Without the accumulation of information about her, we would never have reached such a position in the hierarchy of the animal world, remaining at the level of a chimpanzee. Even stone tools, which gave the name to the whole historical period (Paleolithic), for their invention and manufacture required a huge amount of skills.
So, without observation and constant study of the surrounding world, a person would hardly have found out that pieces of stone falling into dumps can be split, and various tools and weapons can be made from them. And why do people study nature, if not to make their life easier?
Just imagine how much the standard of living of a nascent civilization has improved when an unknown ancestor noticed that when two pieces of flint hit each other, a spark appears. How would he have guessed that sparks could be used to light a fire if he did not look at the lightning that led to forest fires? In a word, without knowledge of the world around us, we would not have been able to survive for a long time.
Many thousands of years have passed. Why do people study nature at a later time? All for the same purpose: they are looking for ways to make their life more comfortable and safer. Watching the wind, they came up with sails and windmills. Watching a kettle boil in the flame of a campfire, as steam pushes the lid off it, a man invented a steam engine. Carefully studying the consequences of riding fires, some thinkers of antiquity learned to melt ore … The list goes on and on!
As soon as agriculture appeared, no one asked about why people study nature. Without detailed and maximum information about it, farmers would not be able to get those volumes of milk that were thousands of times higher than the similar results of their ancestors.
Do you think that wheat grown in modern fields has much in common with those cereals that sprouted in the fields hundreds of years ago? If! From the spikelet of modern cereals, we get tens of times more grain and flour than scientists could have imagined in their wildest dreams some 30-40 years ago! But why do people study nature today?
Someone might think that there is no direct need for this: everyone has already learned and managed, you can continue to develop science and technology without looking at it … Fortunately, this is not so. Even the helicopters, submarines, lenses and plumbing that we use every day were created after long observations of nature.
Almost all the outstanding discoveries of our time are made by those scientists who do not spare their time and energy to study natural phenomena and processes. Moreover, today everyone should watch the outside world: all people should know what a fragile and complex mechanism it is. If you explain why people study nature to their friend, you will help to preserve its wealth for future generations.
