As Heinz Pagels Has Said, The Challenge

I Often Think That We Are Like The Carp Swimming Contentedly In That Pond. We Live Out Our Lives In Our Own "pond," Confident That Our Universe Consists Of Only The Familiar And The Visible. We Smugly Refuse To Admit That Parallel Universes Or Dimensions Can Exist Next To Ours, Just Beyond Our Grasp. If Our Scientists Invent Concepts Like Forces, It Is Only Because They Cannot Visualize The Invisible Vibrations That Fill The Empty Space Around Us. Some Scientists Sneer At The Mention Of Higher Dimensions Because They Cannot Be Conveniently Measured In The Laboratory.

Although Humans Have Existed On This Planet For Perhaps 2 Million Years, The Rapid Climb To Modern Civilization Within The Last 200 Years Was Possible Due To The Fact That The Growth Of Scientific Knowledge Is Exponential; That Is, Its Rate Of Expansion Is Proportional To How Much Is Already Known. The More We Know, The Faster We Can Know More. For Example, We Have Amassed More Knowledge Since World War Ii Than All The Knowledge Amassed In Our 2-million-year Evolution On This Planet. In Fact, The Amount Of Knowledge That Our Scientists Gain Doubles Approximately Every 10 To 20 Years.

I Don't. We've Had Three Technological Revolutions That Have Changed The Course Of Human History, All Driven By Physics. In The First, The Industrial Revolution, Physicists Developed Newtonian Mechanics And Thermodynamics, Which Gave Us The Steam Engine And Machine Power. The Second Technological Revolution Was The Electricity Revolution. That Gave Us Radio, Television, And Telecommunications. Then, Physicists Developed The Laser And The Transistor.

Faust Was This Mythical Figure Who Sold His Soul To The Devil For Unlimited Power. The Japanese Have Made That Faustian Bargain Because They Don't Have Coal, Oil Or Hydro Power.

There Are Many Examples Of Old, Incorrect Theories That Stubbornly Persisted, Sustained Only By The Prestige Of Foolish But Well-connected Scientists... Many Of These Theories Have Been Killed Off Only When Some Decisive Experiment Exposed Their Incorrectness... Thus The Yeoman Work In Any Science, And Especially Physics, Is Done By The Experimentalist, Who Must Keep The Theoreticians Honest.