30 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Political, Social, and Scientific Values Should be Mathem...
[P]olitical and social and scientific values … should be correlated in some relation of movement that could be expressed in mathematics, nor did one care in the least that all the world said it could not be done, or that one knew not enough mathematics even to figure a formula beyond the schoolboy s=(1/2)gt2. If Kepler and Newton could take liberties with the sun and moon, an obscure person ... could take liberties with Congress, and venture to multiply its attraction into the square of its...Henry Brooks Adams argues there should be some mathematical formula to describe social and political forces.
30 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
A Solid Prediction About Science from the Early 1900s
Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world. Not only shall we be able to cruise in space, but I'll be hanged if I see any reason why some future generation shouldn't walk off like a beetle with the world on ...Henry Brooks Adams predicts that human civilization will run away with science and it will consume everything in our society and contain the threat of our destruction.