Jules Verne’s scientific predictions for 2889

Jules Verne

In a science fiction story published in English in the United States in 1889, entitled In the Twenty-Ninth Century and subtitled One Day of an American Journalist in 2889, Jules Verne made several scientific predictions that, according to him, would take almost a millennium to be put into practice. Let us look at a few of the most interesting:

•         The average lifetime of the human population will have increased from 37 in 1889, to 68 in 2889. According to the UN, the average longevity in the world exceeded 68 years in the five-year period from 2005 to 2010, almost nine centuries before Verne’s forecast. Here, as elsewhere, he underestimated.

•         The land and sea voyages of the nineteenth century will have been replaced in the XXIX by air travel, or intercontinental underwater pneumatic tubes. At present, little more than a century after Verne’s story, although air travel has achieved great primacy, land and sea travel continue to exist, and for distances less than a thousand kilometers make a successful competition to air travel. Intercontinental pneumatic tubes, on the other hand, are still science fiction, although there some recent steps in this direction.

Irreversible processes

Those physicists who consider the arrow of time as an illusion have a problem: not all physics is compatible with a reversible time, as the equations and theories mentioned in an earlier article of this blog seem to indicate. The second principle of thermodynamics is known since the mid-nineteenth century (1850), when Clausius introduced the concept of entropy and it was proved that the value of this physical magnitude always increases, if it is measured in an isolated system that does not exchange matter or energy with its outside. Since the universe is an isolated system, we have at least one physical quantity that makes it possible to unequivocally signal the direction of time flow.

Aware of this problem, physicists in favor of the reversibility of time have answered in different ways: it has been said that the second principle of thermodynamics is a fictitious, subjective law that does not conform to reality; a mental illusion; an approximation; a consequence of the initial conditions of the universe. It has been hypothesized that, if the universe were cyclic, the arrow of time would be reversed during the contraction stage. (This theory has been abandoned). To escape the problem, Stephen Hawking proposed a universe without initial conditions in his book A Brief History of Time. It is curious, this desire to defend at any price the reversibility of time, when it was precisely Hawking who proposed the existence of an arrow of time in black holes, which rather than being permanent, would disintegrate.

In 1928, a year after inventing the term the arrow of time, Arthur Eddington challenged the physicists who defend the reversibility of time with the following devastating words: If your theory is found to be against the second law of Thermodynamics... there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation (The Nature of the Physcal World, 1928).

Science and civilizations

In my book Biological Evolution and Cultural Evolution in the History of Life and Man, published in Spanish, I analyze the cultural history of 23 civilizations and compare their evolution. In the particular case of science, I wrote this:

...the first-generation civilizations (Mesopotamia, Egypt and the American) reached their maximum scientific development in mathematics and astronomy. Egypt and Mesoamerica added medicine to these sciences. A second-generation (Greco-Roman) and a third-generation civilization (Islam) also practiced the natural sciences. As for the West, it is a unique and unprecedented case, as its scientific development has been overwhelming.

...astronomy was the first cultivated science... Mathematics emerged in parallel... It was soon found that both sciences were related, for mathematics supported astronomy, making it possible to perform complex calculations and predictions.

The pagan religions... tried to predict the future, using for that purpose sacrificed animals, which led to an accumulation of anatomical knowledge, soon applied to man, which mixed with ancient knowledge about the properties of medicinal plants, led to the formation of a corpus of medical doctrines.

On the other hand, the development of the physical, chemical and biological sciences was less urgent... and so it was attempted only by civilizations that had freed from the necessities of survival an important part of human work... This happened for the first time in Greece, the cradle of philosophy and most of the modern sciences.

What is culture?

Politicians and the media do not seem quite clear about the meaning of culture. When people talk about the world of culture, they usually refer to issues as diverse as pop music shows, bullfighting, opera, theater, cinema, museums, university... This is an abuse of language that mixes four things quite different, though related: culture, shows, entertainment and education.

The Cambridge dictionary defines thus these four terms (in each case I have chosen the meaning closest to what I am speaking about, because there are others):

·      Culture: music, art, theatre, literature, etc.

·      Education: process of teaching or learning, or the knowledge you get from this.

·      Show: a theatre performance or a television or radio program that is entertaining rather than serious.

·      Entertainment: public shows, performances or other ways of enjoying yourself.

Let us call things by their names. A cultural act should be a public celebration where attendees try to increase their culture, to get knowledge that will improve their critical judgment. A classical music concert, the presentation of a book, a visit to a museum, are cultural events. Conversely:

1. Except in a few cases, we do not watch a movie to increase our culture, but to enjoy ourselves (entertainment).
2. A pop festival or a bullfight are not cultural events, but shows.
3. We can go to the opera or the theater to improve our culture, but the performance itself may not be a cultural act, but a show, especially when the stage directors distort a classic work to express their originality or to shock the public.
4. University professors can be considered a part of the world of culture if they perform popularization, but that is not their main activity. Education and research are.

When the media talk about the world of culture and put there actors, pop musicians (some of whom confess that they do not know music), and even DJs, they are really talking about the world of entertainment.

Let us call things by their name.

The same post in Spanish
Thematic Thread on Science in General: Previous Next

Manuel Alfonseca

What would be an undeniable miracle?

In 1972, sci-fi writer and publisher Lester del Rey launched a challenge to three well-known authors of the genre: Poul Anderson, Robert Silverberg and Gordon R. Dickson. All three should write a novella on a specific topic: the effect of an undeniable miracle (the sun standing still) on human society. The three authors responded to the challenge, and the three stories were published jointly in a book entitled The day the sun stood still. In this post we shall consider the first of the three, written by Poul Anderson, whose title is A chapter of Revelation.

In a post in his blog, Pablo (a.k.a. sinopinionespropias) specifies which, in his opinion, should be the characteristics of an undeniable miracle:

1.      It must be a prophecy.

2.      Its materialization should not depend on people.

3.      Your probability must be negligible and calculable.

4.      It must be as concrete as possible.

5.      It must maintain the same demonstrative force with the passage of time.

6.      It must make sense at all times.

Split brain

Roger Sperry

During the 50s of the twentieth century, the American neurobiologist Roger Sperry performed various investigations on animals, and human epilepsy patients who suffered repeated attacks, intense and persistent. As a solution to these attacks, he used the somewhat drastic (but possibly necessary) technique of cutting the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve connections that connect the two hemispheres of the brain. The treatment was successful and provided Sperry with a number of subjects with whom he could experience what happens when the two cerebral hemispheres are disconnected from each other.

In his experiments, Sperry proved that the two cerebral hemispheres can act independently. He also discovered that their function is different: the left hemisphere is usually the seat of aggressiveness, logical processes, and the interpretation of written and spoken word. The right hemisphere is responsible for short-term memory, global thinking, artistic activities (as our response to music) and the analysis of spatial relationships. These investigations shed light on diseases and behaviors such as autism, depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. In 1981, Sperry received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, shared with David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel for a different research.

Physical Time and Inner Time

William Blake

We know that physical time goes on regularly, but inner time (our sensation of the passage of time) is very variable. The two times do not have to match. Sometimes, watching at our inner time, a minute can look like hours, while in other cases the hours fly away. An English poet, William Blake, expressed it well in a famous poem:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour

(Auguries of Innocence, 1803?)

There is a long history of literary works, in which a character enters aesthetic or religious ecstasy, or simply falls asleep, and on returning to reality discovers that many years have passed, sometimes centuries. This subgenre (called by scholars sleeper legends) has representatives in many literatures. In Spanish literature, it is reflected in the legend of the monk and the little bird, associated with the monastery of Leire. In this legend, a monk who enters in ecstasy while a bird is singing, discovers upon awakening that three centuries have gone by. Among medieval French lays there is a legend about the knight Guingamor, who arrived in a wonderful city and stayed there for three days, but when he left, he found that three centuries had passed. And in the United States literature we have the famous story by Washington Irving titled Rip van Winkle, whose protagonist falls asleep one night and wakes up 20 years later.