Tomorrow’s Miracles
(continued)
"Looking back into the past’s dim depth one can see a great many "foolish" ideas brought to fruition. Looking ahead into the future one can see..........?"L. Ron Hubbard
Just as God’s connection with man and the Creator of the Universe (Prime Mover Unmoved or whatever God might really be) is pushed back step by step infinitely, so is all knowledge simplified.
Two hundred years ago (although it had probably been outlined already) science would have blinked at the idea of splitting the atom. Science dealt in atoms and molecules in that day and nothing smaller. Today every schoolboy knows that an atom can be split and remade into several things. A hundred years from now, men will look back at this atom splitting and shake their heads over such stupidity as thinking that an electron was the smallest division.
But how do we get to the point where we can look back? The answer is somewhere in our midst. Just who will advance the theory and method for releasing atomic energy is not important. That the possibility of doing so has been often cited and that various means are constantly being proposed is the course which will lead to such a thing. And do not for one hypnotized moment suppose that the method will be born in any flashing, sparking laboratory endowed with millions. On the contrary, it will first be proposed by a thinker. The laboratory may later claim all the credit but that is of no matter, it seems, as long as men can then begin to write all about the mathematics of disintegration with which they will fill ten thousand libraries.
If this cannot be believed, if it cannot be accepted that all truths are simple truths and need only to be pointed out, recall that the splitting of the atom was a simple truth. Then, if it be a matter of concern that the only discoveries left will be complex and that specialization is paramount, remember that the discovery of the disintegration of the atom will scrap all the fine tomes (which fill ten thousand libraries) on the subject of internal combustion engines and propelling forces in general as well as all extant hull, wheel and wing designs. The only thing of these fine flights which will remain is the essential truth from which they were born.
Knowledge is not a swamping sea of facts but a long line of simple truths, each one more simple than the last. If one would discover the next in line, let him not in any specialized field but rather in a cross between two fields or more. And as a man cannot be specialized in half a dozen fields it remains that his investigations would have to be wholly independent of any rubber-stamped outlook. The atom disintegrator may come as a cross between botany and physics. Who would dream of such a thing? But already the newest source of energy is the leaf of a tree. Would a physicist, interested only in physics, have discovered that? It is doubtful. He would have to be more concerned with the entire world around him than he would be with his immediate laboratory bench. Strangely enough, the men who have isolated the greatest truths have not been what is generally known as "an educated man." Widely read, yes. Intelligent, certainly. But above all, anxious to push into anything and everything where the devil would fear to tread.
This thirst for adventure into the abstract is the motivating force of all youth. Later, weighed down with admonitions that one must specialize, youth succumbs to the lure of security and forgets about those things he wanted to plan; in the scramble to read all everybody ever said on the subject of Trimming Frogs’ Toenails.
To be very specific, today the scientist mocks wild ideas about interplanetary travel, saying, "Wel-l-l-l, yes-s, it might be done ... maybe. But ..........." With all respect to him, he is perfectly right. He has a certain job of his own to do. He will probably be dead long before man first sets foot on the moon. But that the dream, any wildest dream, can be accomplished needs only the verification of the source of most of our mechanical marvels today. Submarine? Locomotive? Airplane? Stratosphere and overweather? Typewriter? Traffic signals? Look at what you may and where you may, you will uncover "science-fiction" or a man interested in it.
The philosophers of the great general ideas are, of course, in a class by themselves. But as far as the advanced applications of various methods and hybrid sciences, as far as the forecast of our civilization, and indeed our very architecture of tomorrow, one has only to search the files.
Men have been writing "Science-fiction" since the Phoenicians, perhaps. At least the first story followed soon after writing itself. Once where the "pseudo-science" sent a man west on an iron horse to fight Indians (which didn’t happen really, until many, many years had flown), it now sends men into the outer galaxies.
Among the scientists of today are many outlaws, not quite philosophers, but still intrigued by the ideas which can be turned up.
Looking back into the past’s dim depths one can see a great many "foolish" ideas brought to fruition. Looking ahead into the future, one can see..........?
