Sassari 1st October 2013
Dear students
here I am, though with some delay.
I was not as busy as you might think but I had some problems with my extra old computer.
Sorry, I hope you did not waste too much time.
See you soon.
Ancient Seer of Modern Marvels
Nylon and air-conditioning wouldn’t have
surprised Sir Francis Bacon. He predicted them, along with most of our other
present scientific wonders, over 300 years ago!
by Tyche Ayres
WILL we soon be broadcasting smells? Three
centuries ago, when the Earl of Essex was flirting with Good Queen Bess of
England, a genius sat down and wrote an amazing prediction of the wonders of
science which were to be realized in our day.
Writing in an era of intellectual darkness,
when alchemists and wizards practiced their black arts, this astounding man
foresaw the airplane, television, movies, submarines, automobiles—almost the
whole range of modern discoveries.
Recently a research scientist, digging through the latin script of this ancient
work checked off the list of these three hundred-year-old predictions and found
that every one of them had come true—except one!
The only scientific marvel foreseen in this
work which has not yet been realized is the broadcasting of smells!
The author of this unbelievably clairvoyant
treatise was Sir Francis Bacon. He. himself, led a life almost as fantastic as
the scientific predictions he made. Today, Bacon is revered as the “father” of
modern science. He was the first expounder and advocate of the experimental
method in physical science.
But, besides his immense philosophical works,
Bacon also found time to be Attorney General for Great Britain, Keeper of the
Royal Seal, Lord Chancellor, and one of the prosecutors of the famous Earl of
Essex, whose love affair with Queen Elizabeth was portrayed not long ago in the
motion picture, “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.” Bacon became the
storm center of a dispute over the authorship of the works of William Shakespeare—an
argument which still rages to this day, in which many students maintain that
Bacon truly wrote the masterpieces attributed to the Bard of Avon.
And, just to add spice to his varied career,
Bacon wound up his public life locked in the Tower of London, guilty of
accepting $200,000 in bribes!
Bacon’s amazing prophecy of modern inventions
was made in an essay called “The New Atlantis,” published in the year 1620. Writing
in a recent issue of the General Electric Company’s magazine, Mr. L. A. Hawkins
called this work of Bacon’s “the world’s first experiment in the popularization
of science.” “The New Atlantis,” in other words, was the direct progenitor of
Mechanix Illustrated!
In order to appreciate fully the magnitude of
Bacon’s intellectual accomplishment in “The New Atlantis,” one must remember
that at the time he wrote this essay, there was no such thing as science. People
of those dark days believed that serpents, worms, frogs and similar forms of
life were magically “generated”‘ from mud and slime. All phenomena which they
could not explain they ascribed to wizards and witchcraft. The dreaded
Inquisition was still in existence, torturing and killing those brave souls for
heresy who dared to expound new ideas.
Living in this morass of ignorance, then, Bacon
wrote his essay. In it, he pictured a magic island, cut off from the rest of
the world, where he found a race of people who had progressed beyond his times.
He then proceeded to outline some of the wonders which this perfect people had
created. It was his view of the future.
In New Atlantis, Bacon wrote, “Science is the
civilizer which binds man to man.” Here was the first conception of the
scientific state —the “new” dream of such modern philosophers as H. G. Wells.
Bacon wrote in stilted, academic Latin, and
when his words are translated they sound colorless and dull, in themselves. But
read a few excerpts from this ancient book and grasp the vivid imagination at
work behind the musty words. As you read this passage, ask yourself whether Bacon
was not describing the generation of electricity, electric light, television,
the talking movies, amplification, the loud speaker, and the radio:
“We have artificial thunder and lightning. We
have instruments which generate heat only by motion” (the dynamo?), “and we
find, also, divers means, as yet unknown to you, of producing light,
originally, from divers bodies.
“We have high towers, the highest about a half
a mile, and some of them set upon mountains. We have houses where we make
demonstrations of all light and radiations, and out of things uncolored and
transparent we can represent to you all several colors and multiplications of
light, which we carry to great distances, and make so sharp as to discern small
points and lines. We procure means of seeing objects afar off, as in remote
places.
“We have also houses of deceit of the senses,
where we represent false apparitions and illusions. Also all delusions and
deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions and colors; all
demonstrations of shadows.
“We also have sound houses, where we practice
and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have divers strange
instruments of music. We represent small sounds as great and deep”
(amplification?) “and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times and
some that give back the voice louder than it came” (loudspeaker?).
“We have all means to convey sound in trunks
and pipes, in strange lines, and distances.”
Although skeptics will argue that Bacon was
having a pipe dream, certainly the fundamental conception of a great many of
today’s marvels is contained in that passage.
In his next paragraph, Bacon speaks of “violent
streams and cataracts which serve us for many motions, and likewise engines for
multiplying and enforcing the winds to set also on divers motions.” Did he
foresee hydro-electrics? Were the “engines for multiplying the winds” the first
conception of aerodynamics. It seems incredible that even as great a genius as
Bacon could have had, in his age, any means of envisioning such wonders. But it
is difficult to interpret his words otherwise.
In rapid succession, as among the miracles of
New Atlantis, Bacon mentions:
“Carriages without horses.”
“Ships without sails.”
“Boats for going under water and brooking
seas.”
“Mechanically made silks, linens and tissues.” (Did
he mean rayon and nylon?)
“Glass of divers kinds, among them some metals
vitrificated.” (What are modern plastics but “metal vitrificated?”)
Bacon’s list of miracles-to-come grows more
astounding as it continues. Centuries before Mendel disclosed the principles of
plant heredity, or Burbank produced his varieties, or the modern methods of
plant “forcing” were discovered, Bacon spoke of the grafting and inoculating of
trees, fruits and flowers, “which produceth many effects. We make by art, in
the same orchards and gardens, trees and flowers to come earlier or later than
their seasons. We make them by art much greater than their nature, and of
differing taste, smell, color and figure than their nature.”
Bacon was three hundred years ahead of Dr.
Alexis Carrel and his chicken heart which he has kept alive in the laboratory
by artificial means. Bacon wrote of “places for animal dissection, wherein we
find many strange effects, as continuing life in them though divers parts,
which you account vital be perished and taken forth; resuscitating some that
seem dead, and the like.”
Recently, there has been much discussion of the
experiments by which cancer sufferers are placed in ice for treatment; yet
Bacon, three centuries ago, wrote of the “prolonging of life and the curing of
some diseases by refrigeration.”
On the subject of medical science, in addition,
Bacon described the microscope and added, “we have houses wherein we make
observations otherwise unseen in the blood and urine.”
The Hayden Planetarium was built in New
York—three hundred years after Bacon described it. For in New Atlantis, he
says, “We have great and spacious houses where we imitate and demonstrate the
meteors.”
Air conditioning? Our most modern industry? See
New Atlantis: “We have certain chambers called chambers of health, wherein we
qualify the air as we think good and proper.”
In New Atlantis, Bacon said, “We have learned
to imitate birds, and have a degree of flying!”
Bacon described “engines which go with the
speed of guns, even as from muskets.”
The army’s new food concentrates are close to
Bacon’s “drinks brewed of flesh, where some are of the effect of meat and drink
both.” Fittingly enough, Sir Francis Bacon died as a direct result of his
fervor for the new conception of experimentation. He spent much of his time
outdoors during the last winter of his life. He was intrigued with another new
idea: the preservation of fresh meat and foods by freezing! He contracted
pneumonia from exposure, while packing meat into a snowdrift one night. He died
anticipating our modern science of refrigeration!
All of Bacon’s fabulous predictions for the
future have now been realized—with one exception.
“We have,” Bacon said, in closing, “houses
wherein we have means of multiplying and sending distances smells and tastes.”
Who will be the first to broadcast smells and
tastes, to add the final touch of realism to television? When will the record
of Sir Francis Bacon’s three-century-old clairvoyance be completed?
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/ancient-seer-of-modern-marvels/
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