Warnings about limits to our ability to understand echo through the ages. For the limited to pursue the unlimited is futile. I am not about to heed these warnings. I have the perhaps naive belief that the universe is comprehensible and what we don't manage to understand during my career, I have confidence that your generation and those after you will. Science is driven not only by the curiosity of those who explore today but also by their confidence that others like you will succeed where they have failed.
Science is intrinsically forward looking.
What we do not understand we will. Our store of imagination and wonder for the future is in our children. But in this, the richest country in the world, one third of our children will spend at least a year in poverty before the age of 16. This situation is far from typical of other industrialized nations. With this unconscionable choice of priorities we are wasting our greatest resource for the future of all creative disciplines.