What fool could wish to hold back the progress of science?

In November of 1783 Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes became the first humans to undertake free flight in a hot air balloon. Less than a month later Jacques Alexandre Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert, witnessed by hundreds of thousands of onlookers, took flight in a hydrogen gas filled balloon. Marveling at the scene and the experience of floating freely above the earth, Jacques Charles describes his experience…

I exclaimed to my companion Monsieur Robert – “I’m finished with the Earth. From now on our place is in the sky! …Seeing all these wonders, what fool could wish to hold back the progress of science!” –Jacques Charles, 1783

Another 120 years passed before Orville Wright took flight in the first powered and controlled flying machine in 1903.

With another 30 years, in 1933, the Russians set the high altitude record at 60,698 feet in a hydrogen filled balloon. Two years later the U. S. Army Air Corps and the National Geographic Society collaborated to best the Russians at an altitude of 72,395 feet.

22 years later, in 1957, the Russians surprised everyone, putting the first manmade satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit. A few months later the Russians launched Sputnik II, containing the first living creature, Laika, a dog who was doomed from the outset to die alone in space.

Less than a year after Sputnik II, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created, and the space race was on in earnest.

In 1961 the Russians were first again, putting Yuri Gagarin into orbit around the planet and bringing him back safely to earth. Too bad they couldn’t provide a safe return for poor Laika.

Only a month after Yuri Gagarin’s historic 108-minute orbital flight, NASA launched Alan Shepard into space, on a sub-orbital flight lasting only 15 minutes.

In 1966 the very first photo of planet Earth with the surface of the moon in the foreground was taken by the unmanned spacecraft, Lunar Orbiter I.

Two years after Lunar Orbiter I, in 1968, while orbiting the moon in Apollo 8, William Anders took the iconic photo now known as “Earthrise.” What image could more perfectly illustrate the beauty and precious nature of this place we live, planet Earth?

One year later, on July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to set foot on any celestial body other than planet Earth. They returned safely to planet Earth three days later, on July 24, 1969.

For millennia mankind looked up at the sky marveling at its beauty and mystery, but had no notion of what they were really seeing. Then it took only 186 years from the time Jacques Charles first floated freely above the planet until another man, standing on the moon, looked back at that planet surrounded by the vast emptiness of space. The planet that had nurtured his evolution for all those millennia.

Over the last two centuries we have done some rather amazing things…

  • Exploring and conquering the North American Continent, and just about every square inch of the planet.
  • The steam engine
  • Mastering Electricity
  • The Telephone
  • Internal combustion engine
  • Antibiotics
  • Refrigeration
  • Computers
  • Air travel
  • The internet
  • Cell phones
  • And literally millions of other clever inventions

Of course, having had such a marvelous and unique experience for the time, Jacques Charles would be enthralled with science and the benefits it promised to bring us. He probably had no idea science and technology would bring us the things listed above. But if he had known about those things, it would have made him even more emphatic. He had no opportunity to see any of the potential problems that come with these marvels… to see the forthcoming rapid rate of change… to know that for every human alive on the day he took flight there are now 10 people alive today… to see how our great numbers and hunger for the wonders of technology fuels our gluttonous consumption of planetary resources beyond sustainability… to see that our addiction to the wonders of technology clouds our ability to objectively evaluate the results of our actions.

Who among us wants to give up the wonderful things we have created over the last two centuries??? Anybody want to give up electricity… maybe your refrigerator… or your cell phone??? How about antibiotics and other medical advances???

I don’t know exactly how much human activity IS sustainable, but it is unmistakably clear to me that we cannot go on for the next two centuries changing the environment as we have for the last two centuries.

So, Jacques Charles asks, “What fool could wish to hold back the progress of science?”

I reply, “I am such a fool… and I’m not finished with the Earth!”