Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.
Edward TellerTags: science future technology discovery fission futurism scientific-discovery electronics james-watt electrons practical-applications applications-of-science nuclear-energy
Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.
The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.
This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.
Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.
His historical picture closes with the end of the nineteenth century, and with good reason. By that time it seemed that the influence of these mythic, authoritatively anchored forces which can be denoted as religious, had been reduced to a tolerable level in spite of all the persisting inertia and hypocrisy.
Even then, a new branch of mythic thought had already grown strong, one not religious in nature but no less perilous to mankind -- exaggerated nationalism. Half a century has shown that this new adversary is so strong that it places in question man's very survival. It is too early for the present-day historian to write about this problem, but it is to be hoped that one will survive who can undertake the task at a later date.
Tags: fear science future humanity nationalism suffering organized-religion myths forward historian objectivity biologist homer-smith homer-w-smith man-and-his-gods mythic-thought
People from the past, have a tendency to walk back into the present, and run over the future.
Anthony LiccioneTags: past future present enemies disaster past-lives family-members disown old-friendships people-from-past
But the trouble is, I do want to be surprised. I want to choose. I broke the heart of my fate so that I could choose. I never chose; I only saw a little girl who looked like me standing on a gear at the end of the world and laughing, and that's not choosing, not really. Wouldn't you rather I chose you? Wouldn't you rather I picked our future out of all the others anyone could have?
Catherynne M. ValenteAnd a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be right.
Ray BradburyIt is my belief that the basic knowledge that we're providing to the world will have a profound impact on the human condition and the treatments for disease and our view of our place on the biological continuum.
J. Craig VenterTags: science future progress knowledge biology belief evolution medicine treatment disease genetics molecular-genetics
A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.
Christopher WrenTags: science life prediction future universe aliens space astronomy planets galaxy extraterrestrials extraterrestrial-life alien-life extra-solar-planets
I am only a child yet I know if all money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty, and binding treaties, what a wonderful place this Earth would be.
A. ZampolliTags: future peace environment wars un-meeting
There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh. We yearned for the future How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?
Margaret AtwoodTags: future sex loneliness yearning insatiability
People are so busy polishing their past, that they forget to paint their future.
Himanshu VassanpalTags: motivational life inspirational truth past future people philosophy
« first previous
Page 87 of 88.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.