From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Apr 20 2003 - 18:01:17 MDT
--- "Peter C. McCluskey" <pcm@rahul.net> wrote:
> mez@apexnano.com (Ramez Naam) writes:
> >As research for my book I'm looking for historical examples of
> >prominent people calling a newly developed technology immoral,
> >unethical, unnatural, and so on.
>
> A web search for "smallpox edmund massey" will produce reports of
> 18th century religious arguments against smallpox vaccinations which
> were apparently shared by many theologians.
some others:
Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the
world.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Everything pleasant in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
And anything that doesn't fit in those three categories causes cancer
in laboratory animals.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-Albert Einstein
Everything that can be invented, has been invented.
-Charles H. Duell (Commissioner, US Patents Office, 1899)
Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
-Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of
nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of
phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.
-William James
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God
who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect
intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo
I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that
stones fell from the sky
-Thomas Jefferson, after hearing reports of meteorites.
If the whole world depends on today's youth, I can't see
the world lasting another 100 years.
-Socrates
It is apparent to me that
the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago
were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem,
have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.
-Thomas Edison, 1895
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday
is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.
-Robert Goddard
Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools.
-1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary
rocket work.
So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could
find hitherto unknown lands of any value.
-Spanish Royal Commission, rejecting Christopher Columbus' proposal to
sail west.
Space travel is utter bilge!
-Sir Richard Van Der Riet Wolley
The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances,
known forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a
practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through
the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the
demonstration of any physical fact to be.
-astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906
Some have claimed that if moral knowledge is to have different origins
from knowledge of other matters, then moral propositions should not be
validly deducible from non-moral propositions. This seems to be the
intent of David Hume's famous dictum, in his Treatise of Human Nature
that it is fallacious to argue from 'is' to 'ought' or 'ought not'. To
quote:
In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have
always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary
way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes
observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised
to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and
is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought,
or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the
last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new
relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and
explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what
seems altogether inconceivable, how this relation can be a deduction
from others, which are entirely different from it.
other references to examine...
On the difficulties encountered by would-be forecasters throughout
history, see I.F. Clarke, The Pattern of Expectation, 1644-2001
(London: Cape, 1979).
On the early history of the electric power industry, see Thomas Parke
Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society,
1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
The most prominent critic of the “aeroplane’s” practical applications
in the early 20th century was a physicist named Simon Newcomb. See, for
example, his article, “The Prospect of Aerial Navigation,” North
American Review 187 (March 1908), 337-347.
Brian W. Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction
(New York: Avon Books, 1986).
This alleged '640k' quote from Gates is widely and gleefully repeated
in computing publications. See, for example, Ray Kurzweil, The Age of
Spiritual Machines (New York: Viking, 1999), 170.
On early speculations over the future uses of aircraft, see Roger E.
Bilstein, Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts,
revised edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
I also recommend you read this anti-nanotechnology paper:
http://www.checs.net/checs_00/presentations/nanotech.htm
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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