Transcribe
Translate
Scientifictionist, issue 2, 1945
Page 9
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
forget all about it in a few weeks anyway. Just listen to One Man's Family, or John's Other Wife, or Bob Hope (Of course, I like Bob too, you understand) and let all your worries and doubts drift blissfully away on a nice, soft, pink cloud. Forget it Mac, forget it. Relax fella, everythings going to be okay. Well, there are your basic reasons for war. Profit, expansion, power, personal gain, religion and all the rest. Now for the question of mental stimulation, boosting of morals, the excitement, the healthy psychological feelings that wars are supposed to produce. What feelings? Did the people of France derive any mental stimulus from the outbreak of war? Did they rise to any heights of patriotic fervor during the war? Very little, if any. They were just as apathetic and disillusioned during the war as they were before; and they haven't improved much since V-E day. What mental stimulus has there been? I couldn't find any. America snapped out of her apathy for a while during the war but it was not so much due to the thrill of war as to the thrill of full paychecks and full stomachs. There was a slight feeling of national morale due to the fact that for the first time in decades most Americans were working together instead of against each other. To a certain extent we were working towards the same end in a more or less unified manner, but that feeling has completely disappeared since the outbreak of peace; and we're right back where we started in 1940. A healthy mental stimulus could be developed if Americans would organize and work together in peace and harmony and understanding for a better America and a better world. Perhaps we should try it sometime. As for scientific progress during a war, the main progress is made in the field of technological processes rather than out of pure science. We improve and accelerate the methods and technics of producing war or consumer goods but these are merely extensions of what we did in peace time. And this speedup can be accomplished just as easily in peacetime as during war. The reason that we don't do it is that during peace we produced more than we could sell, even with the antique, outmoded manufacturing facilities we had before the war. Why build more efficient machinery just to produce more unsaleable goods? It's silly. Of course, you may point out, "look at the atom bomb. Didn't the war hurry that up?" It did to a certain extent, but mainly because the men involved in its development were working with an unlimited bank roll behind them for a change. They weren't hampered by the lack of equipment and facilities. But they had been working on atomic power and heavy water for the past decade. It was nothing new. And look at all the other important discoveries of science during the past 150 years. Pasteur, Curie, Steinmetz, Koch, Plank, Watt, the Wright brothers, Eli Whitney, Marconi -- none of them and dozens of others were not under the pressure of a war when they made their discoveries. The automobile, the submarine, dynamite, the telephone and telegraph, vitamins, insulin, rust resistant wheat, hybrid corn -- none of these were developed during a war. No, war isn't necessary to scientific progress. Much more could be done during peace if an honest effort was made to produce as much as possible with the most modern equipment possible, and if scientists and technicians were allowed to work unhampered by financial pressure and the skullduggary of large corporations and vested interests who own and control the majority of research labs and equipment, the men who work in them and their inventions. For example, Bell Telephone Co. owns about 9000 patents and only uses about 3000. There you have just one company shelving 6000 patents, products of hard work and brilliant minds, merely because these inventions are "commercially unsound", meaning of course, that the company would either make no profit on the development of these discoveries, or would lose money through the marketing of new and more efficient equipment. We all know about the tactics of corporate enterprise as far as new inventions are concerned, so there is no need to go into the subject. At any rate the history of suppressed inventions would fill many volumes. page 9
Saving...
prev
next
forget all about it in a few weeks anyway. Just listen to One Man's Family, or John's Other Wife, or Bob Hope (Of course, I like Bob too, you understand) and let all your worries and doubts drift blissfully away on a nice, soft, pink cloud. Forget it Mac, forget it. Relax fella, everythings going to be okay. Well, there are your basic reasons for war. Profit, expansion, power, personal gain, religion and all the rest. Now for the question of mental stimulation, boosting of morals, the excitement, the healthy psychological feelings that wars are supposed to produce. What feelings? Did the people of France derive any mental stimulus from the outbreak of war? Did they rise to any heights of patriotic fervor during the war? Very little, if any. They were just as apathetic and disillusioned during the war as they were before; and they haven't improved much since V-E day. What mental stimulus has there been? I couldn't find any. America snapped out of her apathy for a while during the war but it was not so much due to the thrill of war as to the thrill of full paychecks and full stomachs. There was a slight feeling of national morale due to the fact that for the first time in decades most Americans were working together instead of against each other. To a certain extent we were working towards the same end in a more or less unified manner, but that feeling has completely disappeared since the outbreak of peace; and we're right back where we started in 1940. A healthy mental stimulus could be developed if Americans would organize and work together in peace and harmony and understanding for a better America and a better world. Perhaps we should try it sometime. As for scientific progress during a war, the main progress is made in the field of technological processes rather than out of pure science. We improve and accelerate the methods and technics of producing war or consumer goods but these are merely extensions of what we did in peace time. And this speedup can be accomplished just as easily in peacetime as during war. The reason that we don't do it is that during peace we produced more than we could sell, even with the antique, outmoded manufacturing facilities we had before the war. Why build more efficient machinery just to produce more unsaleable goods? It's silly. Of course, you may point out, "look at the atom bomb. Didn't the war hurry that up?" It did to a certain extent, but mainly because the men involved in its development were working with an unlimited bank roll behind them for a change. They weren't hampered by the lack of equipment and facilities. But they had been working on atomic power and heavy water for the past decade. It was nothing new. And look at all the other important discoveries of science during the past 150 years. Pasteur, Curie, Steinmetz, Koch, Plank, Watt, the Wright brothers, Eli Whitney, Marconi -- none of them and dozens of others were not under the pressure of a war when they made their discoveries. The automobile, the submarine, dynamite, the telephone and telegraph, vitamins, insulin, rust resistant wheat, hybrid corn -- none of these were developed during a war. No, war isn't necessary to scientific progress. Much more could be done during peace if an honest effort was made to produce as much as possible with the most modern equipment possible, and if scientists and technicians were allowed to work unhampered by financial pressure and the skullduggary of large corporations and vested interests who own and control the majority of research labs and equipment, the men who work in them and their inventions. For example, Bell Telephone Co. owns about 9000 patents and only uses about 3000. There you have just one company shelving 6000 patents, products of hard work and brilliant minds, merely because these inventions are "commercially unsound", meaning of course, that the company would either make no profit on the development of these discoveries, or would lose money through the marketing of new and more efficient equipment. We all know about the tactics of corporate enterprise as far as new inventions are concerned, so there is no need to go into the subject. At any rate the history of suppressed inventions would fill many volumes. page 9
Hevelin Fanzines
sidebar
