Lewis and Clarke
From http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=31279
The quote below is from a review of Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin by Francis Spufford a book about the history of technology and society. It’s about six engineering projects that have taken place in Britain since WWII. The projects range from rockets through Concorde to computer games, cell phones, and the Human Genome Project.
Two famous figures in the science fiction world are mentioned in this anecdote:
Since they are British, I assume "pissed" in the sentence above means intoxicated with spirits, not intoxicated with anger.
My comment: Myself, I see no evidence that any new tool has transformed anyone’s "awareness" — a phrase I notice has mystical rather than scientific implications.
Like the debate between G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells about the wisdom of a scientifically-organized eugenic socialist utopia, history has once again come down on theside of the writer the intelligentsia dismiss as an irrational religious obscurantist, and history has debunked, even humiliated, the faddish optimism of the writers whose zealous idolatry of science is regarded by the intelligentsia as rational and progressive. I am frankly puzzled why worshipers at the altar of progress regard their worship as scientific, when real scientific thought consists, not of enthusiasm, but measured skepticism, detailed observation, and experimentation under conditions that control the variables.
I know of no one who regards G.K. Chesterton as the great prophet of the modern age, even though he saw and described the ills of the modern world decades, or a century, in advance; but I often here the foresight of H.G. Wells lauded. We see in operation the reverse Cassandra effect, where the more completely exploded a man’s predictions are, the less skeptically his devotees regard his oracles.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
