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Harry Robinson takes the long view and comes up thinking.
Malcolm Fraser is credited with saying, "Life is not meant to be easy." Doubt hangs over when he said it and whence he borrowed it. It is in G.B. Shaw's five-in-one series of plays under the umbrella title Back to Methuselah and it is a shame Fraser did not give the rest of the quote which is, "..but take courage: it can be delightful."
Whatever
happened to GBS? He died just over 50 years ago, when people used the phrase
"From Shakespeare to Shaw" to mean from pinnacle to pinnacle of English drama.
Some saw him as a verbose firecracker, others as a godless gadfly and others
still as a philosopher whose time would come. At present it seems to be going,
but come-back is still possible. If you want to buy a copy of Back to
Methuselah now you'll probably have to visit a seller of rare books.
The work is a series of visionary projections encompassing human life from the
creation in 4004 BC up to the year 31920 AD*. Shaw envisaged that by 2170 AD men
and women would begin to reach lifespans of 300 years and such fooleries as
party politics and formal religions would be in discard. By the year 3,000 we
would be shedding more fooleries--love and art and even poetry. One character
asks, "What is a church?"
Why is the next stop 31,920 AD? Because, suggests Shaw, that is "as far as
thought can reach." Make what you like of that, but it is in this final play
that we have a He-Ancient and a She-Ancient and Youth and a Maiden, among
others, trying to identify the most desirable of all human activities. In a few
words, the best thing we can aspire to is to pursue mathematics, to consider the
properties of numbers, to honour our Life Force with abstract speculative
thought. By this time, physical lifespan is believed to be unimportant, but
might be as long as Methuselah's--969 years…but it's not the length that counts,
it's the thought.
Sounds familiar? Very. When our contemporary scientific community proposes pure
scientific research as a good thing to do, and a good thing to finance, the
response is often "pooh, pooh, selfish, pointy-headed game playing." Scientists
are wont to reply, "pooh, pooh to you too--pure research often turns a profit."
And it does. But Shaw's mind saw much more than material profit as a
justification for research which might crack some of nature's secrets, and might
not. To him, adventurous mental inquiry was in itself good.
Well, not much use toting a copy of Back to Methuselah up to Parliament
House with a plea for money. The security persons will escort you to a holding
room in no time at all and, for your own protection, you'll be examined,
analysed and locked up. While in protective custody, you'll have time to think
about lots of what-ifs?
What if governments taxed the foolish and childish (Shaw's words) pursuits of
obscene piles of money and displays of excess wealth. What if they allocated the
taxes to science? What if the international art market's wild valuations of
pictures in the tens of millions were taxed and the proceeds were handed to
science? What if governments guided sport off the field of hype and back to more
modest playing fields--the savings to go to science?
An intelligent observer might say any fool can waste time playing the what-if
game and nobody will be any richer or wiser. No? What if ancient astronomers had
never speculated on why the stars moved as they did? What if Harvey had never
thought about blood and its movements in our bodies? What if Fibonacci had never
speculated about rabbit reproduction, had never looked at the so-called Arabic
numerals and changed Europe with his
Liber Abaci?
They were doing what G.B. Shaw said is the most splendid use for our
minds--thinking to the outer reaches of speculation. In Back to Methuselah he
was practising what he was preaching--he was thinking about peak development of
humanity. And he knew that, "Life is not meant to be easy... but it can be
delightful."
Something to keep in mind as scientists go looking for financial support.
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