Sunday, October 08, 2006

"It's Closing Time, Gentlemen!"

Re-posted from GlobalProvince...Better get READY! Pax...Doubting Thomas

(click title)

From The Saturday Evening Post, June 24, 1950, at the conclusion of an article entitled "The Truth About the Hydrogen Bomb":

One is reminded of a dinner conversation in Paris some eighty years ago, recorded in the Journal of the de Goncourt brothers. Some of the famous savants of the day were crystal-gazing into the scientific future 100 years away. The great chemist, Pierre Barthelot, predicted that by 1969 "man would know of what the atom is constituted and would be able, at will, to moderate, extinguish and light up the sun as if it were a gas lamp." (This prophecy has almost come true.) Claude Bernard, the greatest physiologist of the day, saw a future in which "man would be so completely the master of organic law that he would create life (synthetically) in competition with God."

To which the de Goncourt brothers added the postscript: "To all of this we raised no objection. But we have the feeling that when this time comes to science, God with His white beard will come down to earth swinging a bunch of keys, and will say to humanity, the way they saw at five o'clock at the salon, 'Closing time, gentlemen!'"