Blog: The Cargo Culte

In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton. In the nineteenth century, with Newtonian physics pretty well assimilated and a lot of work in thermodynamics going on, man was looked on more as a heat-engine, about 40 per cent efficient. Now in the twentieth century, with nuclear and subatomic particles a going thing, man had become something which absorbs X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons. It may be that the civil servants of the future will not be accredited unless they first receive a degree in brain surgery. - [...]