Sir Arthur Clarke, a graduate of King's College, London, was the author of numerous works of science and science-fiction, including his well-known collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was Chancellor of the International Space University and Chancellor of the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, where he had lived for 30 years. Clarke passed away on March 19, 2008.

The following essay was published June, 05 1998 , in Science magazine

Presidents, Experts and Asteroids

Sir Arthur Clarke

For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.(Late 20th-century folklore)

For more than a century science and its occasionally ugly sister technology have been the chief driving forces shaping our world. They decide the kinds of futures that are possible. Human wisdom must decide which are desirable.
It is truly appalling, therefore, that so few of our politicians have any scientific or engineering background. Yet while some scientific training should be a requisite for anyone making policy decisions, it is clearly not sufficient. Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, two U.S. presidents with engineering backgrounds, were probably as perplexed as anyone when faced with making policy decisions involving science or technology.
Even the wisest and best science-educated of politicians may have difficulty making good decisions when, as is often the case, "experts" disagree. There are some hilarious examples of this in the history of science--for example, Lord Kelvin's declaration that x-rays must be a hoax, and Ernest Rutherford's even more famous dismissal of atomic energy as "moonshine."
Politicians now are wrestling with the matter of human cloning, perhaps the most notable controversy now facing science and society. Any developments that concern biology--especially human biology--are liable to arouse passions, as witnessed in the debates over abortion, euthanasia, and evolution. I have encountered a few "creationists" and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were really mad, or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading humankind? And, although I do not necessarily agree with the paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin's advocacy of evolution as a major proof of the glory of God, de Chardin's attitude is both logical and inspiring. A creator who laid the foundations for the entire future at the beginning of time is far more awesome than a clumsy tinkerer who constantly modifies his creations and throws away entire species in the process. Even the Vatican, while firm in its declaration that the human soul is divinely created and not subject to process, has stated that the theory of physical evolution is more than just a hypothesis (1996).
Science and society can also clash in the area of military security. I was involved in the debate over the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, a.k.a. Star Wars) from its inception 15 years ago this spring. My attitude then, as now, was that although it might be possible to construct local defense systems at vast expense that would let through "only" a few percent of ballistic missiles, the much-touted idea of a national umbrella was nonsense. Luis Alvarez (winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in physics), perhaps the greatest experimental physicist of this century, remarked to me that the advocates of such schemes were "Very bright guys, with no common sense."
Now, looking into my often cloudy crystal ball, I suspect that a total defense might indeed be possible in a century or so, but the technology required would produce, as a by-product, weapons so terrible that no one would need any longer bother with anything as primitive as ballistic missiles.
If I might hazard another prediction, I suspect that President Reagan's 1983 "Star Wars" speech outlining his idea of an umbrella defense system consisting of armed space satellites to protect America against attacks by nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, will one day be regarded as a work of political genius. However shaky SDI's technological foundations, it may well have contributed to the ending of the Cold War. Yet its technology may come to be useful in ways unanticipated at its inception. The projected SDI armory of lasers and interceptors could one day be used to save not only the United States, but indeed the entire human race from the threat of comets and asteroids.
The scientific establishment has only slowly understood that the history of this planet, and perhaps of civilization itself, has been modified in important ways by physical impacts from space. We have come a long way since President Jefferson remarked, "I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky," for now we know that mountains can indeed fall from the sky. And here we have perhaps the most perfect example of the quotation that opens this essay. Volumes of statistics have been amassed on either side of the question: How much effort should be devoted to a danger that is probably remote, but that may sterilize our planet? In my estimation we need to embark on serious study on the probability of comet or asteroid impactors on the planet Earth. The cost would be quite trivial, and the results should be of great astronomical value, based on our experience of comet Shoemaker-Levy's impact on Jupiter. And what a tragedy Gene Shoemaker's untimely death was! Gene, some of whose ashes are now on the moon, would have been amused by the embarrassment that his unusual internment caused at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Even more controversial than the threat of asteroid impacts is what I would call perhaps one of the greatest scandals in the history of science, the cold fusion caper. Like almost everyone else, I was surprised when Pons and Fleischmann announced that they had achieved fusion in the laboratory; and surprise changed to disappointment when I learned that most of those who had rushed to confirm these results were unable to replicate them. Wondering first how two world-class scientists could have fooled themselves, I then forgot the whole matter for a year or so, until more and more reports surfaced, from many countries, of anomalous energy production in various devices (some of them apparently having nothing to do with fusion). Agreeing with Carl Sagan's principle that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs" (spoken in connection with UFOs and alien visitors), I remained interested, but skeptical.
Now I have little doubt that anomalous energy is being produced by several devices, some of which are on the market with a money back guarantee, while others are covered by patents. The literature on the subject is now enormous, and my confidence that "new energy" is real slowly climbed to the 90th percentile and has now reached the 99% level. A Fellow of the Royal Society, also originally a skeptic, writes: "There is now strong evidence for nuclear reactions in condensed matter at low temperature." The problem, he adds, is that "there is no theoretical basis for these claims, or rather there are too many conflicting theories."
Yet recall that the steam engine had been around for quite a while before Carnot explained exactly how it worked. The challenge now is to see which of the various competing devices is most reliable. My guess is that large-scale industrial application will begin around the turn of the century--at which point one can imagine the end of the fossil-fuel-nuclear age, making concerns about global warming irrelevant, as oil-and-coal-burning systems are phased out.
Global warming is another area where politicians cannot be blamed for being confused. Although most scientists agree that warming is occurring, some, such as Fred Singer, who headed the U.S. meteorological satellite program, do not. We may need global warming, after all, as the current interglacial period draws to a close. As Will Durant said many years ago, "Civilization is an interlude between ice ages."* If this is true, the cry in the next millennium may be "Spare that old power station--we need more CO2!"
Finally, another of my dubious predictions: Pons and Fleischmann will be the only scientists ever to win both the Nobel and the Ig Noble Prizes.

-courtesy Science Magazine

Letter to Russell —Will Durant

Dear Earl Russell,

Will you interrupt your busy life for a moment, and play the game of philosophy with me?

I am attempting to face, in my next book, a question that our generation, perhaps more than most, seems always ready to ask, and never able to answer — what is the meaning or worth of human life? Heretofore this question has been dealt with chiefly by theorists, from Ikhnaton and Lao-tse to Bergson and Spengler. The result has been a species of intellectual suicide: thought, by its very development, seems to have destroyed the value and significance of life. The growth and spread of knowledge, for which so many reformers and idealists prayed, appears to bring to its devotees — and, by contagion, to many others — a disillusionment which has almost broken the spirit of our race.

Astronomers have told us that human affairs constitute but a moment in the trajectory of a star; geologists have told us that civilization is a precarious interlude between ice ages; biologists have told us that all life is war, a struggle for existence among individuals, groups, nations, alliances, and species; historians have told us that ‘progress’ is a delusion, whose glory ends in inevitable decay; psychologists have told us that the will and the self are the helpless instruments of heredity and environment, and that the once incorruptible soul is only a transient incandescence of the brain. The Industrial Revolution has destroyed the home, and the discovery of contraceptives is destroying the family, the old morality, and perhaps (through the sterility of the intelligent) the race. Love is analysed into a physical congestion, and marriage becomes a temporary physiological convenience slightly superior to promiscuity. Democracy has disintegrated into such corruption as only Milo’s Rome knew; and our youthful dreams of a socialist utopia disappear as we see, day after day, the inexhaustible acquisitiveness of men. Every invention strengthens the strong and weakens the weak; every new mechanism displaces men, and multiplies the horrors of war. God, who was once the consolation of our brief life, and our refuge in bereavement and suffering, has apparently vanished from the scene; no telescope, no microscope discovers him. Life has become, in that total perspective which is philosophy, a fitful pullulation of human insects on the earth, a planetary eczema that may soon be cured; nothing is certain in it except defeat and death — a sleep from which, it seems, there is no awakening.

We are driven to conclude that the greatest mistake in human history was the discovery of truth. It has not made us free, except from delusions that comforted us, and restraints that preserved us; it has not made us happy, for truth is not beautiful, and did not deserve to be so passionately chased. As we look upon it now we wonder why we hurried so to find it. For it appears to have taken from us every reason for existing, except for the moment’s pleasure and tomorrow’s trivial hope.

This is the pass to which science and philosophy have brought us. I, who have loved philosophy for many years, turn from it now back to life itself, and ask you, as one who has lived as well as thought, to help me understand. Perhaps the verdict of those who have lived is different from that of those who have merely thought. Spare me a moment to tell me what meaning life has for you, what help — if any — religion gives you, what keeps you going, what are the sources of your inspiration and energy, what is the goal or motive-force of your toil; where you find your consolations and your happiness, where in the last resort your treasure lies. Write briefly if you must; write at leisure and at length if you possibly can; for every word from you will be precious to me.

Sincerely,

Will Durant

William James Durant (November 5, 1885 — November 7, 1981) was an American philosopher, historian, and writer. He is best known for writing, with his wife Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, an 11-volume work written between 1935 and 1975. The Durants were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1967 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom 1977- courtesy , Daily Times, Lahore, Pakistan

Giammaria Ortes — Italo Calvino

Once upon a time there was a man who wanted to calculate everything: pleasures, pains, virtues, vices, truths, errors. This man was convinced that he could establish an algebraic formula and a system of numerical quantification for every aspect of human feeling and action. He fought against the chaos of existence and the indeterminacy of thought with the weapon of ‘geometrical precision’, a weapon, in other words, derived from an intellectual style which was all clear oppositions and irrefutable logical consequences. The desire for pleasure and the fear of force were for him the only certain premises from which to embark on a journey towards knowledge of the human condition: only by this route could he succeed in establishing that even qualities such as justice and self-denial had some solid foundation.

The world was a mechanism containing ruthless forces: ‘The true worth of opinions is wealth since it is wealth that changes hands and buys up opinions’; ‘Man is basically a trunk of bones held together by tendons, muscles and other membranes.’ Predictably, the author of these maxims lived in the eighteenth century. From the machine-man of La Mettrie to the triumph of the cruel pleasures of Nature in de Sade, the spirit of that century knew no half-measures in its rejection of any providential vision of man and the world. It is also predictable that he lived in Venice: in its slow decline the Serenissima felt itself more and more caught up in the crushing contest between the great powers, and obsessed by profits and increasing losses in its trade; and more and more immersed in its hedonism, its gaming halls, its theatres and carnivals. What other place could have provided greater stiumulus to a man who wanted to calculate everything? He felt a vocation to devise a system to win at the card-game ‘faraone’, to calculate the right quantity of passion in a melodrama, and even to discourse on the interference of government in the economy of the private individual and on the wealth and poverty of nations.

But the man in question was not a libertine in learning like Helvetius, nor a libertine in practice like Casanova: he was not even a reformer battling on behalf of Enlightenment values, like his Milanese contemporaries.... Giammaria Ortes, for that was his name, was a dry, irritable priest, who wielded the spiky carapace of his logic against the premonitions of the upheaval pervading Europe and rumbling even among the foundations of his native Venice. He was a pessimist like Hobbes, loved paradoxes as much as Mandeville, was peremptory in his argumentation, and dry and acerbic in style. Reading him, we are left without a shadow of doubt about his position as one of the most unmisty-eyed champions of Reason with a capital R. Indeed we have to make a real effort to accept the other details supplied by biographers and experts of his entire oeuvre, particularly as regards his intransigence on matters religious and his substantial conservatism...And this should be a lesson to us never to trust received notions and clichés, such as the traditional view that the eighteenth century was dominated by the clash between a religious spirit heavy with sentiment and a cold, unbelieving rationality: reality is always much more nuanced, same elements continually combining in a whole range of different assortments. Behind the most mechanical and mathematical vision of human nature can easily lie a Catholic pessimism about earthly matters; precise, crystalline forms emerge from the dust and take shape before returning to dust again.

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923, and grew up in Italy. He was an essayist and journalist and a member of the editorial staff of Einaudi in Turin. His books include Marchovaldo, Invisible Cities, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, If on a winter’s night a traveller and Mr Palomar. In 1973, he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. Above is an extract from his essay on Giammaria Ortes, featured in his book Why read the classics

Q. Quotes

1.You are a philosopher, Dr Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher: but I don’t know how. Cheerfulness was always breaking in- Oliver Edwards (1711-1791) Quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 17th April 1778

2.I think it’s the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone – President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) at a dinner for Nobel Prizewinners, 29 April 1962

3.There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided – Charles Baron De Montesquieu (1689-1755) (lettres persanes, 59)

4.In the information age, you don’t teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle was alive today, he’d have a talk show- Timothy Leary- (1920-1996), in Evening Standard (British Newspaper), 8th February 1989

5.A little philosophy inclineth Man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion – Francis Bacon (1561-1626). “of Atheism”, Essays 1625

6.God will pardon me, it is His trade -Heineich Heine (1797-1856) last words

7.When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes – W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

8.Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they do is the same as what they most want to do – W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

9.In Germany, the Nazis came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I was a Protestant so I didn’t speak up. Then they came for me… By that time there was no one to speak up for anyone – Martin Niemoller (1892-1984)

10.The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries – Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

11.Many quite sensible people believe that the Marxian class war will be a war to end war. If it ever comes, they too will be disillusioned-if any of them survive. – Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

12.In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that he should allow such things to go on – Mohandis K. Gandhi (1869-1958) Referring to the death and destruction he anticipated at the start of the World War II, September 1939 , In Louis Fischer , The life of Mahatma Gandhi , 37 , 1950

13.I fired [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. That’s the answer to that. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three quarter of them would be in jail – Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) said in an interview, quoted in Merle Miller, Plain Speaking, 24