Although the Psychotechnic Institute has been outlawed, psychodynanics has benefitted the Order of Planetary Engineers:
"...a Planetary Engineer had training for his profession such as had never been seen before. He didn't have to stew for weeks before seeing the answer to a problem.
"His subconscious mind collaborated all the time." (IX, p. 205)
Energy sources, coal and oil, lay untapped in the Earth until the Industrial Revolution. After that, came nuclear and solar energy. Mental resources remain largely untapped. Psychological understanding and training should be able to release previously untapped mental potentialities. What will fully developed brains and minds produce? The solution to a problem enters consciousness after the unconscious mind has had time to work on it. How quickly will answers be found if the subconscious and conscious minds collaborate continuously? How much potential is there in the whole population? At present, intellectual capacities are educationally developed only to the extent that they are needed by the present job market. The Engineers terraform planets. What will unleashed mental abilities achieve in the Solar System and beyond?
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
If it wasn't for Our Lord, after His resurrection, being able to pass thru locked doors, as in John's gospel, I would be wholly skeptical of "mental resources." But Christ was obviously a very special case!
I don't think ordinary human beings will have more than very slight traces of possible psi abilities in most cases.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We were not talking about psi.
Paul.
Note: coal was used before the Industrial Revolution. In Britain, there was a massive trade in coal from Newcastle to London as early as the 1500's, simply because wood had grown expensive.
In fact, coal was used in an increasing array of manufacturing processes from the 1500's on in England; things like brewing, copper-smelting, salt-boiling, etc.
The high price of wood and charcoal was a continual prod up the backside to find ways to use it.
The 'final' refinement was the use of coke from coal to refine iron by Darby in the Severn Valley in 1709, tho' at first only for cast iron.
That wasn't an isolated development -- experiments had been going on for some time, because it was an obvious extension of the substitution of coal for charcoal that had been going on for centuries.
That was what reversed the tendency for iron-smelting to move to areas with abundant forests -- in the 1750's, the American colonies, Sweden and Russia had all about caught up to English production, but by 1800 England and Scotland had left them all in the dust.
Got it. But over a period of time and culminating in the Industrial Revolution and its consequences energy that had always lain dormant was released, unleashed etc.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, but Stirling's point was that as some forms of energy became more costly that stimulated the demand for finding less costly sources of energy. Hence coal more and more replaced wood and charcoal.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: also because English agriculture had become more marketized (and productive), which placed a premium on cleared land, and gave it a further advantage over forest and coppice, especially as population grew.
There wasn't any 'wildwood' in England in the 1500's and hadn't been for a long time. It was all managed forest -- planted and harvested roughly like crops.
It's a set of feedback loops.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That makes sense. By the 1340's, shortly before the Great Plague which so devastated England/Wales in 1348-49, I doubt there were any true wild woods left by then. It was all managed forests by that time.
Ad astra! Sean
I *think* somewhere in this video (The "Energy Transition" is a Myth) was where I saw it pointed out that use of wood for energy in Britain never declined. Just that increased energy use was provided by other sources. First coal then other fossil fuels, hydro & nuclear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxsZtwIhFw&t=1s
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, but that made it even more necessary to manage forests, to ensure a steady supply of wood.
Ad astra! Sean
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