Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!jeremy.DEC!redford
From: redford@JEREMY.DEC (John Redford)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Bronowski and historical fossils
Message-ID: <8603090839.AA00847@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Sun, 9-Mar-86 03:38:48 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.8603090839.AA00847
Posted: Sun Mar  9 03:38:48 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Mar-86 20:22:46 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 52


J. Giles writes:

>  This last is a (loose) paraphrase of something from Jacob Bronowski's
>"Ascent of Man."
>  "... If we do not take the next step in the ascent of man, it will
>be taken elsewhere, in Africa, in China.  Should I feel that to be
>sad?  No, not in itself.  Humanity has a right to change its colour.
>And yet, wedded as I am to the civilization that nurtured me, I should
>feel it to be infinitely sad.  I, whom England made, whom it taught
>its language and its tolerance and excitement in intellectual
>pursuits, I would feel it a grave sense of loss (as you would) if a
>hundred years from now Shakespeare and Newton are historical fossils
>in the ascent of man, in the way that Homer and Euclid are....
>						- J. Bronowski
>J. Giles
>Los Alamos

Homer and Euclid fossils?  They are studied with respect to this day,
millenia after they and their cultures died. If Western civilization
is remembered the way that the Greeks are we'll have done very well
indeed. 

Everything dies, be it countries, or civilizations, or whole 
species.  I doubt if America will be around in any recognizable form 
in two thousand years, or if homo sapiens will be around in a hundred thousand.
Our species didn't even exist a mere fifty thousand years ago, and 
there are notable anatomical differences between us and the people of 
even twenty thousand years ago.  Why imagine that the process has stopped?
If anything it has accelerated.  Folks on this list have been 
blithely talking about our descendants of 200,000 years from now.  
The chances are that they won't be human.  Human, that is, in the 
sense of being genetically and mentally similar to us.

But who would even want evolution, both 
cultural and biological, to stop?  Heaven knows there are enough 
problems with existing soceities and people.  Trying to freeze a 
culture at its present state would like trying to freeze yourself at 
the age of ten.  It's fine to be ten years old for a year, but to be 
that way forever would be a good approximation of hell.

The most that any culture can hope for, just as the most that any 
person can hope for, is to be remembered with respect and affection 
after they are gone.  That's one reason why I support the space program.
It's one area where America can make a genuine contribution to the 
heritage of humanity.  What do we want to be remembered for?  Mickey Mouse?
Developing the atomic bomb?  Or opening the future to the wide 
expanses of the universe?  This is our chance to make a mark, one 
comparable to Homer's and Euclid's.

John Redford
DEC-Hudson