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Bizarre, v. 4, issue 1, Janurary 1941
Page 16
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Page 16 BIZARRE The Open Mind by E. E. Smith, Ph. D. Calling Kaletsky . .! To tell any man that he has no sense of humor is to insult him practically beyond forgiveness. Yet now many men actually have a real sense of humor? Similarly, any S-F fan will contend—and will uphold the contention with might and main—that he himself is open-mindedness incarnate; that his mind is as pellucidly clear and as unobstructed as intergalactic space. Yet how many of us are kidding ourselves? I will admit that as a class S-F fans are more open-minded than most. They have to be, or they would not be fans. This, it seems to me, is axiomatic, from the very nature of scientific fiction. However, that admission is, a la Shakespeare, damning with faint praise indeed; for it is literally appalling that so few people make any attempt whatever to think for themselves, that so many are either unable or unwilling to take any mental nourishment that is not completely predigested. Nor has open-mindedness any close relationship to brain power. Scientists as a class can think—that is the way they earn their livings—but are they really open-minded? Witness the treatment accorded by scientists to almost every propounder of a new idea. They closed their minds to the idea of a round earth: they knew and proved that it was flat. Scientists, only a few years ago, knew and proved mathematiclly that any heavier-than-air machine could not possiby fly. And today, anyone who upholds in strictly scientific circles the intrinsic possibility of space-flight—as I have done more than once—is very apt to be regarded as a crackpot. Hence, fellows, this plea for more real thought and less dogmatism in your judgments and pronouncements. There are impossibilities, of course. Not as many as there were a few years ago, to be sure; but unless and until our language, elementary mathematics, and habits of thought change most radically, quite a few impossibilities will remain. This necessitates a definition of "impossibility." For the purpose of this article, sketchily and in a very few words, here it is:—That which violates a natural law. Not a theory, please note, but a LAW. Here also must be pointed out the difference between mathematical and philosophical reasoning. Philosophically, it is by no means a certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. The observational fact that it has done so every morning up to now does not establisb a natural law. It sets up an extremely high degree of probability, but that is all, and in that connection it must be remembered that it was against a probability of even greater magnitude than that that the very earth upon which we live came into being. Mathematically, however, as opposed to philosophically; by celestial mechanics and its proven laws; the sun's rising tomorrow morning becomes a certainty—although, even there, the mathematician is forced to stipulate that no new force shall become operative in the meantime. It is definitely impossible for a second satelite to be hiding eternally behind the moon from earth, for the orbital velocity-distance relationships of such a body would be contrary to the laws of planetary motion. The first time that that idea was used in a S-F story it stank to high Heaven, and with each subsequent use the stench got no better fast.The abuse of the distance-squared law is just as bad: it made me writhe to read that the gravitational field of a planet
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Page 16 BIZARRE The Open Mind by E. E. Smith, Ph. D. Calling Kaletsky . .! To tell any man that he has no sense of humor is to insult him practically beyond forgiveness. Yet now many men actually have a real sense of humor? Similarly, any S-F fan will contend—and will uphold the contention with might and main—that he himself is open-mindedness incarnate; that his mind is as pellucidly clear and as unobstructed as intergalactic space. Yet how many of us are kidding ourselves? I will admit that as a class S-F fans are more open-minded than most. They have to be, or they would not be fans. This, it seems to me, is axiomatic, from the very nature of scientific fiction. However, that admission is, a la Shakespeare, damning with faint praise indeed; for it is literally appalling that so few people make any attempt whatever to think for themselves, that so many are either unable or unwilling to take any mental nourishment that is not completely predigested. Nor has open-mindedness any close relationship to brain power. Scientists as a class can think—that is the way they earn their livings—but are they really open-minded? Witness the treatment accorded by scientists to almost every propounder of a new idea. They closed their minds to the idea of a round earth: they knew and proved that it was flat. Scientists, only a few years ago, knew and proved mathematiclly that any heavier-than-air machine could not possiby fly. And today, anyone who upholds in strictly scientific circles the intrinsic possibility of space-flight—as I have done more than once—is very apt to be regarded as a crackpot. Hence, fellows, this plea for more real thought and less dogmatism in your judgments and pronouncements. There are impossibilities, of course. Not as many as there were a few years ago, to be sure; but unless and until our language, elementary mathematics, and habits of thought change most radically, quite a few impossibilities will remain. This necessitates a definition of "impossibility." For the purpose of this article, sketchily and in a very few words, here it is:—That which violates a natural law. Not a theory, please note, but a LAW. Here also must be pointed out the difference between mathematical and philosophical reasoning. Philosophically, it is by no means a certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. The observational fact that it has done so every morning up to now does not establisb a natural law. It sets up an extremely high degree of probability, but that is all, and in that connection it must be remembered that it was against a probability of even greater magnitude than that that the very earth upon which we live came into being. Mathematically, however, as opposed to philosophically; by celestial mechanics and its proven laws; the sun's rising tomorrow morning becomes a certainty—although, even there, the mathematician is forced to stipulate that no new force shall become operative in the meantime. It is definitely impossible for a second satelite to be hiding eternally behind the moon from earth, for the orbital velocity-distance relationships of such a body would be contrary to the laws of planetary motion. The first time that that idea was used in a S-F story it stank to high Heaven, and with each subsequent use the stench got no better fast.The abuse of the distance-squared law is just as bad: it made me writhe to read that the gravitational field of a planet
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