Uncommon Eloquence, Common Cause: Frederick Douglass & Abraham Lincoln

During an age when letter writing was the typical mode of communication for even the shortest distances, the eloquence in those missives, (from the meanest, most pedestrian communiqués to the most important and formal declarations) was a common feature and a common courtesy. This was especially true during times of conflict and national upheaval, such as the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and War Between the States. Letters that readily illustrate this fact are still in existence from each of those periods.

 Yet some orators (or writers) managed to stand out and above this practice of ‘common eloquence’, elevating writing to the level of prose so powerful that some of it now ranks as part of the national heritage of American literature. Two such writers of this caliber were the firebrands of their age: Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

Douglass and Lincoln had a common goal, but did not always agree on how to achieve it. They also had an unusual and rather uncommon background, one that they shared and which made them brothers of sorts: Frederick Douglass’s father may have been white, and was probably his owner, albeit one who apparently loved and doted on him. (He also most likely arranged for both his escape from slavery, and his education.)

Lincoln had worked as an indentured servant from childhood to young adulthood, a type of bonded servitude, the polite term for slavery, which was used when referring to whites and foreigners of European descent. He was ‘rented out’ by his own father, Thomas Lincoln, for menial, backbreaking labor (such as rail splitting and hog butchering) in rural Indiana, until he was twenty-one. His earnings amounted to thirty-one cents a day, presumably none of which he was allowed to keep.

As an adult, he grew to detest the work and the practice whereby one human being used another to perform endless, backbreaking, menial labor. The memory of that period of his life would eventually inform and influence his opinion of slavery, once he realized abolishing it for all time was, in fact, the only way to bring the country back together. However, at onset of the war, this was, admittedly, not his primary goal; it had originally been the salvation of the Union no matter the cost, with slavery, or without it. There was a time when that choice did not matter to him, where the fate of the Union was concerned.

 Douglass, on the other hand, saw no other option and no course of action other than the instant, ultimate, and complete abolishment of ‘that most peculiar institution’ slavery, including equal treatment and pay for freed blacks enlisted in the Union army.

Herein lay the vast, roiling sea of the differences between them, and what was to become the seed of their eventual respect for each other, and their friendship.

Lincoln had the more difficult challenge before him, convincing a culture that had owned slaves for generations to give up the plantation lifestyle and the considerable wealth that came with it, and the divestiture of their ‘property’ with freedom and full citizenship for persons who had once been held as valuable chattel.

If he proceeded too quickly, the enterprise would be doomed from the start. Even though Douglass knew Lincoln’s reason for erring on the side of caution, he had neither his adversary’s time nor patience to proceed at the beleaguered president’s maddeningly measured pace. Still, Douglass had to admit this himself, after the fact, that Lincoln had been right.

The two, Mr. Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln, possibly greatest leaders of their time, met on three occasions (in 1863, 1864 and 1865, the same year Lincoln was eventually assassinated), to discuss these most poignant concerns. Each went on to write about those meetings and their common goals. Ultimately, the most powerful voices of the Civil War became, if not the greatest of friends, then great respecters of each other’s ideals, burdens and integrity.

Together, their words forced a nation to free itself from the hideous institution of slavery that had existed from long before the War of Independence until the end of the Civil War.

What the Founding Fathers could not (or would not) address in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution was left to be hashed out by Lincoln, Douglass, and their contemporaries. The words they left behind on paper bear witness, both silent and thunderous, to a time and place in American history when finally, the lofty ideals espoused so eloquently by the Founders began to be fully (if somewhat reluctantly ) embraced and expanded to include more than just the privileged few. 

The Selected Writings of Douglass (and Others)

The Complete Writings of Abraham Lincoln

Diversity and the Joy of Creation

Cinema and animation (and video game creation) are just a few of the fields where a large group of creative, talented, and (one would suppose) highly intelligent people can come together to create something better than perhaps all of them could create individually.

(There are exceptions – Tolkien, for example.) This is especially true of those media meant for mass consumption by an extremely wide and varied audience, one number in the millions, each demographic within that diverse group with widely differing tastes and preferences. Therefore, it’s no mean thing to please a large percentage of them at any give time.

Disney’s The Lion King, (originally released in 1994) was and remains just such a project. Even though it had a less than auspicious origin, (it may have been plagiarized) it quickly rose to become an all-time favorite for the studio and its massive audience, immediately ranking it on equal footing with the near-hallowed Disney classics of past decades.

After ‘allegedly’ pilfering the storyline from an obscure Japanimation feature entitled Kimba the White Lion Cub, (the evidence is overwhelming) Disney recruited the very best animators, voice actors, writers, directors, and set designers they could find. That creative team included signing on Sir Elton John and other musical artists both locally and abroad (mostly Africa) to bring together storyboards, characterizations, and the award-winning score, including a CD full of catchy tunes.

The attached video, featuring Elton John and an entire studio of backup/choral singers (and even a lion cub AND a full-grown male lion) gives a revealing peek into the sheer joy of the creative process, especially as personified by Elton himself, singing his own song, Circle of Life.

We humans are an adversarial lot, both with ourselves, and each other. But sometimes, just sometimes, the things that we can come together to create, across all the human-made boundaries of race, religion, creed, sex and gender preferences, politics, and even geography – can be nothing less than miraculous, inspiring, and totally amazing.

Even more amazing is the fact that whenever we do, we tend to reach a much wider audience than we would without all that creative diversity.

Circle of Life

Andromeda Strain Revisited

The Andromeda Strain (1971) ranks as one of my top five favorite ‘hard’ science fiction movies, (as opposed to fantasy sci-fi).

I was about 14 years old when a junior high school teacher, (whose husband happened to be a personal friend of Michael Crichton’s) made the bold decision to take a room full of giggling 8^th graders to see a movie that, technically speaking, was somewhat ‘beyond’ the intellectual and emotional capacity of most of those (often rowdy) students.

Her approach was simple: Mrs. Parks read us the first chapter of the book aloud, and then asked which of us wanted to hear the rest of the story – in the form of a movie that afternoon as a field trip.

She must have known all hands would enthusiastically shoot up, if only because it meant a trip away from school. (She also could not have failed to notice that almost eerie silence that had settled over the class as she read that first nail-biting chapter.)

We went to see the movie. I, for one, was literally nailed motionless to my seat for the movie’s entire 131 minutes. (This was a minor miracle in itself, considering my constant hyperactive state, then as now.)

When we returned to school, I meekly asked Mrs. Parks if I could borrow the copy of the book from which she had read to us, with a promise to return it that following Monday. If she doubted I could finish its almost 300 pages of truly hard science and data in that timeframe, she did not voice it. (Michael Crichton, a scientist and doctor himself, filled the book with page after page of real and faux scientific data and hypotheses, making it a challenging read for even a well-educated adult.)

She lent it to me, and, as promised, I read the entire book between getting out of school that Friday afternoon, and returning to her class the following Monday afternoon.

Both the book and the movie electrified my brain, introducing me, in one ‘fell swoop’ to computers, scientists and real science, research and the tackling of unsolvable mysteries. It also demonstrated that, despite their differences (which were several) a diverse group of equally brilliant, dedicated scientists from vastly different fields could come together to solve a puzzle while the fate of an entire planet teetered in the balance, and succeed.

The story was science fiction, not far-fetched or unrealistic, but based rather in real, hard science and actual scientific research methods. The scientists (or the actors cast to portray them) were real people, not those typically cast in movies today (super-young folk with perfect skin and perfectly coiffured hair.)

The Andromeda Strain would be indirectly responsible for my introduction to the worlds of ‘adult’ science, cutting edge technology, the love of research for both research’s sake, AND for the practical use of and to the benefit of all humanity.

I think I will be watching it again this weekend.

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

How Do I Know What I Know Is Right?

 Knowledge is like an I.O.U.

It represents some future value to the one who issues it, and perhaps less to the person it is given to, until it either is paid in full or proved false. Like a good bank (or a reliable person), the value of that I.O.U. is based largely on the reputation of the one who issues it, and what is known about that person; the same holds for knowledge. Each is a currency based on trust and past performance. Each is based on what we think we know about the person issuing the currency, such as reputation, or station in life.

Human beings, for the sake of simplicity and expediency, tend to have a default, almost basic trust in each other, or, at least professionals they depend on (doctors, teachers) and their well-known acquaintances and friends. (In other words, ‘I trust you until you show that I cannot trust you’.) That reputation adds to or detracts from the value of that ‘I.O.U.’ of knowledge whether it is offered as opinion, or fact.

We inherently trust and depend on that person being correct, based on past performance and experience. Failing the presence of both of those, we depend on professional title and assumed knowledge associated with that title. Either way, we except what they offer to be true, at least until proven otherwise.

However, what about ourselves, how do we know what we (personally) know is right? How do we know that what we know about what others know, and are telling us, is also right? By extension, how do we know what we think we know about others is factually correct, and not influenced by emotion, relationship, pre-formed assumptions, or even physical or ideological attraction?

How can we tell if our own long-held opinions, which may or may not be based on fact, are, in fact, correct? How can anybody tell whether anything in his or her vast storehouse of personal knowledge is at all correct, or still correct, from the time it was originally learned? (Things change over time. What was once held as fact may no longer be considered so.)

How do we know how we know anything about the world, and whether it is correct, is actually valid? After all, some forms of ‘misinformation’ can be deadly, such as which mushrooms are poisonous, or which household cleaning chemicals can be safely mixed.

Persons of vast intellect are especially susceptible to this problem, because their storehouse of knowledge contains so much more to keep track of. Like a library of too many books, or a house filled with a lifetime of collected knickknacks and memorabilia, at what point do we eventually ‘lose track of it all’, and forget some of the things we think we know, or worse, confuse it with other things we thought we knew? How long before it all gets lost in the shuffle?

Let us bring back the analogy of knowledge being like an I.O.U. and bump it up to being more like money. Rich people have considerably more money to keep track of, just as the very knowledgeable have more information of which to keep track. This calls for constant relearning, fact checking, and in professions such as medicine and technology, constant recertifying and retraining. That’s fine for professionals, though many doctors (especially older ones) probably don’t retrain as often as they should. (In the technology field, retraining and recertifying cannot be avoided, because of the rate at which the information in that field changes.)

The typical person has it a bit harder, since they have to (or should) ‘re-certify’ on their own, by constant checking and rechecking their facts, and being parsimonious in what they proclaim or ‘say’ as fact.  Geniuses, or the highly intelligent, have an even greater responsibility in this area of fact checking. If all else fails, such people have to be willing to (humbly) admit that they were wrong, and take pains to rectify the problem, and again, by reviewing and if necessary, re-learning, and perhaps be less adamant about what they say is fact.

Part of the problem with knowledge (correct or incorrect) is that because it’s so commonplace, not many of stopped to think what it is, or more importantly, what it is not. I have written about this before on this forum and others:

"There are several types of 'knowledge processes’, which people have access to:

1. Firsthand knowledge based on personal experience and discovery.

2. Secondhand knowledge, which, at its most basic, is something someone told you, or TAUGHT you.

3. Personal hypotheses, theories, and epiphanies or revelations, which may or may not be sound, true, or based on truth, or derived from personal observations and deductions, which may have originated from the interpretation (correct or not) of the first type of knowledge.

The problem comes in confusing these. There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of people in the world who have degrees based on secondhand knowledge who also think they are very intelligent, from PhDs down to associate degrees. They may not be as smart as they think, especially if their understanding does not also contain an equal or greater amount of firsthand knowledge, and discovery based on it.

Having equal helpings of firsthand and secondhand knowledge makes personal hypotheses, theories, and epiphanies more likely to be valid, with the result that those types of erudition (help) create NEW knowledge and result in new discoveries, which add to the overall sum of human understanding and, knowledge."

An entire field of study of the knowledge of knowledge has been around for quite some time, and has gained new immediacy and currency with the advent of the Internet, search engines like Google, and the formulation of  ‘expert systems’ as they are implemented in the growing field of Artificial Intelligence.

Perhaps now is as good a time as any to verify what we know about what we know – before we teach it to the computers that will no doubt soon run our world, and control more critical life sustaining and enhancing systems.

The Analysis of Knowledge

Morals, Game Theory, and Asimov's Psychohistory

In a game of statistical chance, one would naturally assume that a player with the highest IQ would be aware of all the best possible choices, & actually have the sense (!) to act on them each & every time, with little deviation, except for the changing dynamics of the game.

However, there is a missing element here: Pure, cold, almost inhuman (as in ‘Vulcan’) logic. If logic does not come into play, then great intellect will not save even canniest player.

Unfortunately, no matter their IQ (or morals) most humans do not often display this type of logic.

To make it even more interesting, add a huge number of these individuals into a game of statistical chance (like the ones you mention), or, on a much wider scale, worldwide economics, such as the stock market, (or the brinkmanship of a worldwide war). Then you get something very, very close to what Isaac Asimov called ‘psychohistory’ in his Foundation Series, where individual actions count for little, when compared to the larger group. In his series, Asimov proposed that the statistical data from psychohistory could be used to predict and ultimately guide human history itself.

Individually, such choices as one might find in any game that utilizes Nash equilibria (such as the Hawk-Dove game, or just two people walking down the street trying to decide if they should veer left or right to avoid running into each other), such choices & statistics don’t count for much.

However, on a world-wide economic, or planetary scale, they pretty much amount to nothing less than the tide of human history itself (&, of course, the fluctuations of the stock market, which can bring global collapse, as we have seen.)

Side note: A good example of a game utilizing the concepts of the Nash Equilibrium is the game ‘Strategema’ from episode ‘Peak Performance’ of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Yes, unfortunately, I am a Star Trek fan!) When two opponents are too well matched, a path of continual balance leading to a draw (as opposed to seeking to win) is best route to a victory of sorts – for both players. The same could be said for a good game of chess.

Figuring all this stuff out (& the consequences thereof) is what game theory, statistics, & even Asimov’s psychohistory are all about. As such, IQ, morals, & even random choice are best pushed aside for pure logic, something we humans come by only by great difficulty individually, if at all, & NEVER in large groups! 

The Last Tribunal

Adolf Hitler death by suicide, April 30, 1945

In his quest to create a Third Reich (‘empire’ or ‘regime’), Hitler drew on many sources and resources: military, cultural, extraterrestrial (if some theories are to be believed) and, of course, mythological.

Why he would draw on such a diverse range of esoteric resources belies what he believed his sacred task to be, nothing less than the creation of a Third Reich, a third world-spanning empire. This third empire was to assume the historic mantle lost by the first two, the First Reich being the Holy Roman Empire, and the Second Reich, the Germanic Empire, which lasted roughly from the early 1870s until almost 1920.

(This Second Reich culminated in end of WWI and the beginning of the ‘Weimar Republic’ in German history, perhaps best known (to non-history buffs) as the rich setting for the film musical ‘Cabaret’.)

As portrayed in two of the Indiana Jones movies, (Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Last Crusade) Hitler and his minions (including Heinrich Himmler and Josef Goebbels) were obsessed with the Occult. They were also obsessed with the hunting down and claiming as many religious and mythological artifacts as they could, from as many cultures as they saw fit to pillage, (along with other valuable works of art).

They hoped these supposedly powerful relics would contain some type of mystical energy to fuel what they believed to be Germany’s right to empire, and thus prove it was preordained all along by some higher authority.

Those relics included the Spear of Destiny, also known as the ‘Holy Lance’ (which was supposed to have been used to pierce Christ’s side during the crucifixion), the Holy Grail, thought to have been used at the Last Supper, and the Ark of the Covenant (this final relic is debatable as to whether the Nazis actually searched for it, or not.). The Nazis also consulted the prophecies of Nostradamus, looking for justification for their conquests. (Hitler was well aware of the quatrains in those ancient predictions that seemed to refer to him.)

He was also aware of the philosophies of occultists like Madame Petrovna Blavatsky, and her (once)

Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

well-known writings Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, and the growing pseudoscience of eugenics, which presumably provided scientific proof of a superior, perfect human being of pure blood. (Hitler was an admirer of ‘Madame’ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her work. Some of her writings influenced Hitler’s views on race and destiny.)

Surprisingly (to many), this false ‘science’ (eugenics) actually started in the very heart of the U. S., and later migrated to Germany. Its practices included the medical abuses of the infirm and mentally handicapped, unwanted sterilizations, medical torture in the name of science, and a growing idea that some human beings were more ‘human’ than others.

In addition, the entire eugenics movement may have been sparked or inadvertently influenced by the work of Charles Darwin. In fact, the first person to coin the phrase, ‘eugenics’ and the philosophy behind it, was a distant cousin of Darwin’s named Francis Galton, a scientist in his own right.

The Nazis also searched for artifacts of other cultures, religions and belief systems, spending an inordinate amount of time, money and military resources in their vain quests. The eventual loss of these valuable resources most likely contributed to their losing the war.

Also of great significance to Hitler’s need for justification for his unborn Reich was finding definite proof of the existence of the mythical Aryan race and culture.

Of course, such a race, as conjured up by the Nazis for their own benefit, never actually existed. Even more oddly, once they ‘made up’ the Aryans, they spent an inordinate amount of time and money trying vainly to find their fictional race of ancestors.

‘Aryan’ is at most a blanket term that could be used to describe several races and peoples, real or imagined, from the mountain ranges of India to various parts of the Asian and Eastern European continent. The Nazi idea of the ‘ideal’ Aryan (oddly for culture obsessed with racial purity), was an almost bastardized mixture of ALL of these non-European peoples, very few (if any) of them blue-eyed or with blond hair, but, instead, more Hindu and (east) Indian.

Hitler also looked to music for inspiration for his empire. For this task, there was no better choice than Richard Wagner.

Richard Wagner

Wagner and Hitler were a good fit culturally, though the composer had been dead for many years before Hitler’s rise to power. Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883) was virulently racist and anti-Semitic. He especially despised his contemporary Jewish composers such as Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847), and was loath to conduct their music. (Paradoxically, he also admired Heinrich Heine, and had Jewish patrons and admirers. In this, he was also like Hitler, whom, it was rumored, hid Jewish ancestry in his family tree.)

On the other hand, his own music was thrilling, bombastic, heroic, and soul stirring, almost offensively steeped in a nationalistic machismo, a self-serving almost bloated mythology, which not only attracted Hitler, but inspired him as well, from a very young age. (Hitler was so taken with the visions of heroic jingoism in Wagner’s music he had it played in concentration camps for the ‘benefit’ of the Jewish prisoners, as if hearing it would purge them of their ‘unfortunate’ Semitic tendencies.)

Even today, Wagner’s music has an oddly larger-than-life, heroic power that stirs even the most sedate and civilized audience with images of adventure, sacrifice, and glorious battle. Wagner’s own idea of his cult of personality is ingrained the music, which has also woven its way into the fabric of modern opera itself. The figure of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, with her horns, furs and breastplates, spear and shield, has become a caricature and de facto symbol of modern opera, at least to the general public.

In fact, Wagner’s music is so powerful that Hollywood has used many of his musical conventions and motifs in soundtracks for years. (From a more personal perspective, it is also extremely electrifying to actually perform this music.)

It’s more than coincidence that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings cycle, based on the Tolkien trilogy, uses ‘Wagnerian’ musical phrases to portray the inherent evil of the ‘one ring’, its power, and any who wields it.

This draws on a long-standing argument among fans of Wagner and Tolkien whether their two Ring cycles are related, or, at least, drawn from the same Germanic folkloric sources. Even Tolkien himself has denied this; though his cycle is almost exclusively about races of beings, some of which are ostensibly ‘superior’ to others, and the contention over a ring of power that would confer even more status on the wielder (along with their eminent downfall.)

Richard Wagner: loved, hated, reviled, and respected, composed the soundtrack for a failed empire that would rise and fall more than sixty years after his death, ending as ‘un-heroically’ and unceremoniously as it had begun, with capsules of steel and cyanide in a cramped, garishly over-furnished, poorly illuminated bunker.

Practical Magic

Practical Magic & The Great Philosophical Debates of Science

Practical Magic: Magic that accomplishes useful objectives.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke (the third of his Three Laws.)

Of the great debates of science, seven in particular are as long-lived as they are indeterminable:

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design (a.k.a. ‘Creationism’)

Nature vs. Nurture

Practical vs. Theoretical

Applied vs. Basic (Research)

God (or Religion) vs. Science

Natural (‘Organic’) vs. Artificial

Philosophy vs. Sophistry

(Honorable mentions go to Truth vs. Justice and Wisdom vs. Knowledge. These are not strictly ‘scientific’, and are debatable only when one half of each argument is expected to be in complete alignment with the other yet it is not, OR when each of the two is erroneously thought to be closely enough aligned in ideologies to make them almost indistinguishable from each other to the uninformed.)

Because this short essay is concerned only with just one of these, I will dispense with the others in summary fashion:

ü  Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: It could be that the vehicle for achieving ‘intelligent design’ is evolution itself, implemented by an Unseen Creator’s hand (divine or not) on a scale of time (and level of technology) outside of the scope of mere human comprehension.

ü  God (or Religion) vs. Science: In the same vein, science, as we understand it, may be the remaining evidence of the work of some power or level of intelligence far beyond anything we know, i.e. ‘God’. What we know as science is merely how we slowly learn to discover and explain the myriad intricacies of the forces behind Divine Creation in microcosm.

ü  Nature vs. Nurture: It could be argued that these are one and the same, and that Nature itself is the very first ‘nurturer’, while parental nurturing is actually defined by the nature of the parent(s), whom, in a never-ending cycle were the products of their own nurturing by Nature, or natural (biological) forces.

ü  Philosophy vs. Sophistry: Granted, this one was never a serious debate in ancient times, nor is it now. However, if anyone still knows the meaning of the word ‘sophistry’ (please feel free to Google it), then they would soon discover that this very essay may be an example of that long-lost art, or on other hand, it may not.

That leaves only two, Applied vs. Basic (Research) and Practical vs. Theoretical. Because these are essentially the same thing, I will immediately dismiss the former for the latter. Further, I will attempt to explain why I consider myself a pragmatist (and of the Practical School) and not a theoretician, although I have dabbled in it sometimes. I will start by explaining why my preference is not to play chess much.

The reasons are simple, but first I would like to point out that I actually do like chess, a great deal. I am not the best player that I could be (or the worst), but I do get by, with the occasional flash of dare I say, extremely good play. After the advent of computer chess, I have preferred to play against my PC, or my Android phone, because an opponent is always ready when I am so I don’t have to dig one up or find one online, and I can stop and resume the game whenever I want. (Also, my electronic opponents do not offer up ‘trash talk’ when they are winning or losing!)

Chess, played well, takes a considerable amount of time, energy, creativity, innovation, and thought, and, when you are done (whether you have won or lost) you have gained (or earned or created or discovered) not much in the way of practical value. To my mind, it ultimately is a waste of ‘my mind’, my time, and all the other adjectives from the previous sentence. Chess is theoretical and not practical. (In addition, it could explain why top chess champions are often suicidal or depressed and morose; they have put ‘it all’ on the line for absolutely nothing outside a few accolades from their peers, whether they win or lose.)

I feel the same way about Mensa-style puzzles and brain-twisters. They are amusing, baffling, infuriating, and challenging, but solving them yields nothing of any use to anybody. (In the past, I have prescribed them to people who want to improve their problem-solving skills on websites like Quora.) However, ultimately, after all that head scratching, nothing useful or concrete will have come of the entire exercise.

It is for these reasons that I do not play chess as often as I used to, nor spend as much time as I used to doing puzzles. (I still have long bouts of doing each, usually in the summer, as a mental workout. These ‘spurts’ of mental aerobics can last weeks, if not the entire summer, but eventually I lose interest in each.)

No, as I said in my ’Thirty Postulates for Problem-Solving’, my vote is solidly cast for practical, pragmatic, real-world problem solving for use in real applications. (Note: I am all for theoretical work if it is precursor of some practical, real-world break-thru or discovery. Theoretical for its own sake is only slightly interesting on an intellectual level, and not much else.)

If I had to pick a current trend more in line with my strong desire to tinker, fuss, fix, and create, it would have to be the ‘maker culture’. Making, tinkering, building: call it what you will, it is practical, and often (but not always) leads to real world, practical things.

Even possibly the greatest genius to ever live, William James Sidis, had no use for mathematics, (theoretical or otherwise) as a child until his parents could demonstrate it also had a practical, useful application. (For a good book on his tragic, fascinating life and the astonishing level of his genius, check out The Prodigy, by Amy Wallace.)

To put it slightly more bluntly (and more colorfully) theory without practical application is like an incantation without the rabbit at the end. I think for the typical person, the practical application of science (or any field) is much more impressive than pure theory. Moreover, sometimes, the awe it can create is nothing short of amazing, seeming almost miraculous and very much like magic. The sensation of encountering technology bordering on something truly magical is familiar to anyone who has been alive for the past century. Anyone who recalls the first time they saw color TV, watched a photograph develop before their very eyes, saw the first animated web page suddenly come to life, heard the first cell phone call, or recalls the very first time (civilian) GPS was used, knows that technology and magic can sometimes be one.

Einstein’s work may seemed to have been mostly theoretical (especially the annus mirabilis papers, of which portions are freely downloadable from the Internet) but it was the practical proof and application of his arcane work that made him the world’s first celebrity theoretical physicist back when most people had no idea what a ‘physicist’ actually did. The same could be said for his contemporary, Nicola Tesla, whose dazzling experiments (and brilliantly bizarre personality) made him a modern-day Merlin to many.

Mark Dean

History is filled with brilliant men and women whose practical work in the sciences bedazzled their generation, and brought new, usable applications to their time, and beyond. Johann Gutenberg, Madame Marie Curie, Edwin H. Land (Polaroid instant photography), Jack Tramiel, creator of the Commodore 64, the best-selling computer in history, and its miraculous follow-up, the Commodore Amiga. In the world of modern super-computing, there is Seymour Cray, whose name is now synonymous with the super-computing industry, Mark Dean, who helped develop or invented many of the supporting PC technologies in use today, and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web.

All these individuals, wizards in their own right; have made the world a better place and more interesting place with the creation of their particular brand of ‘practical’ magic.

It appears that Mr. Clarke was correct.