Wednesday, 2 March 2022

How Valuable Is Science?

"The Sky People."

Ruori's verdict on the Meycans:

"'What you lack is merely the means of gaining new knowledge...if left to yourselves, you will slide gracefully back into the Stone Age.'" (p. 71)

Poul Anderson's Time Patrollers encounter two timelines where, never making the scientific revolution, mankind never breaks out of an endless cycle of empire and collapse. Scientific method is of inestimable value and science fiction needs to state this fact more often.

CS Lewis, in his unscientific sf, damns with faint praise when he writes of:

"The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves...'"
-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 9, P. 560.

Good and innocent in themselves! They are a great deal more than that.

Ruori has a typically American sfnal way of speaking about science:

"'The way of the Sky People is the rough way outward, to the stars.'" (p. 71)

Yes, scientific knowledge will include means of space travel, including interstellar travel, but it is not our destiny to go there, necessarily. We can know about the universe from any point within it although it will certainly be helpful to get out at least into the Solar System.

Lorn says it again in the following story:

"'Power to go to the stars.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Progress" IN Anderson, Maurai And Kith (New York, New York, 1982), pp. 73-137 AT p. 110.

I am all for it if someone wants to do it.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Anderson's "The House of Sorrows" also shows us a timeline where the scientific method/mindset was apparently never discovered. With Anderson strongly hinting that was because the Jews were stamped out by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

It SHOULD be our destiny to break decisively out into the Solar System and then to the stars!

Ad astra! Sean