My son, Tim, called me yesterday on my birthday and before
long we were chatting philosophical stuff. He asked me if I planned on posting
any more things like I did about Darwin. So, we talked about science and
technology a bit and I came up with this:
Science toys with us, as though within it, we will
eventually discover the Holy Grail. Always, since even before Francis Bacon, we
believed that because science might provide for us enough food and water access
to feed the planet and provide for everyone, or through it, we would be able to
talk to one another in a common language, see our common humanity, science would
eventually eradicate war. Science didn’t eradicate war, it perfected it. In the
twentieth century, wars were first fought with total scientific detachment. Open a trap door, press a button and vaporize
a quarter of a million people. Those who
would place their faith primarily in science and would turn a deaf ear to the
dualist/theists will regret the lessons learned from the past. Remember the difference
between “knowledge” and “wisdom”. It takes knowledge to build the “big one”, but
“wisdom” to keep that sonofabitch away from the kids.
Is science finally “settled”? Is it settled regarding global
warming or ape-to-man evolution (see my Darwin posting)? Arising out of the
first agricultural civilizations appearing after the close of the last ice age,
man’s intellectual hunger has no limit and its capacity has no end. It often gambles on the attempt to observe
some discernible pattern in the events of history. Well, how about this musing
of Loren Eiseley in his 1971 Invisible Pyramid: “Beginning on some winter night, the snow will fall steadily
for a thousand years and hush in it’s fallings … the cities. The delicate
traceries of the frost will slowly dim the glass in the observatories and all
will be as it had been before … The long trail of Halley’s comet, once more
returning, will pass like a ghostly matchflame over the unwatched grave of the
cities.”? Will Chicago be one huge block
of ice, and in it, the forlorn and echo-empty “Carbon Exchange”? Don’t ask me.
I don’t attempt answers, I just post questions. It’s much safer. But I will
say, “It’s not… ‘settled’”. Look, if the
Vikings who about 1,000 A.D. traveled from Norway to Greenland (so named
because it was lush in the hospitable balmy climate), then on to Newfoundland
where they luxuriated and built settlements which they occupied for about 500
years, decided to “bag it”, and go back home, it wasn’t because of a minor nip
in the air. Fur-wrapped Vikings could deal with a little chill. That mini ice
age was punishing. If the crops won’t grow and the fishing spots are frozen
over, it’s time to bag it. Another indicator can be found in the woods where
the wood for Stradivarius violins were initially taken. That quality of wood
has disappeared because the changing climate has made the tree growing season so
radically different. So, if Nero is going to play the fiddle while we freeze,
it won’t be a “Strad”. However, if we
really warm up, you won’t hear any complaints from me. I’m already in Alaska. So,
you’ll find me eating locally-grown bananas on the beach in Nome. More stuff
later… I’m getting tired of writing.
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