[extropy-chat] FWD (Skeptic) Intellectual history

[Terry W. Colvin]

I have been reading Dawkins's Ancestor's Tale (although I think the

title should have been in the plural). It is not often that I read a 
popular science book that really stretches my mind; this is one of 
the rare ones. Dawkins's account of plate tectonics (I haven't read 
further than this, not yet) caused me to consider the intellectual 
history through which I have lived (and even, to some extent, taken part).

When I first read about cosmology, in the popular science works of 
Sir James Jeans, the age of the Sun was assumed to be much less than 
we now conclude, because its source of energy was not understood. 
Hans Bethe had just published his conclusion that the Sun was powered 
by hydrogen fusion, but that had not reached beyond physicists to the 
public. I remember reading science-fiction stories and speculations 
about fission energy (before secrecy shut them down), and then, after 
the first use of the nuclear fission bomb, the rest of the story, and 
about Bethe's fusion theory also. I remember reading the first 
popular accounts of Crick's and Watson's discovery of the structure 
of DNA. I remember reading the first popular accounts of the 
acceptance, about 1960, of Wegener's 1912 theory of continental 
drift, now plate tectonics. I was active in the change from vacuum 
tubes to semi-conductors (when a four-transistor integrated package 
was a big deal). I did my part in working out the application of game 
theory and statistics to industrial processes and business decisions. 
I also did my part in working out the early application of the 
computational methods made practical by semiconductors to industrial 
processes.

I have crossed seas and oceans by steamship, and continents behind 
steam locomotives, on journeys that I now make by air (although I 
first flew, from Corsica to Marseilles, in 1930). I used slide rules, 
now saved as curiosities, for tasks that I now do by hand-held 
calculator. Way back when, I stumbled through a high-school course in 
mechanical typewriting, and, later, carefully chose pens and ink with 
which to write (now existing, unused, in a drawer of my desk, more 
curiosities), preferring them to the typewriter. With poor 
typewriting skills and bad handwriting, I jumped aboard the text 
processing revolution as soon as it started, a transformation 
evidenced by this message. My composition started with pen and ink, 
greatly benefited from the easy editing provided by text processing, 
and now I have produced the complete content of books, words, 
indexes, illustrations, leaving to the industry only the mechanical 
work of printing from my files and binding the printed result.

I have probably benefited from the progress in the life sciences and 
medicine, although there have been technical mishaps as well.

All in all, an enormous amount of change in the thoughts and 
activities that have mattered to me.

John Forester, MS, PE
Bicycle Transportation Engineer



-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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