We live in a society exquisitely dependent on Science and Technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them. George Jetson, of The Jetsons , while being thrown around the skywalk . A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting. Science can purify religion from error and superstition.
Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
Thus the yeoman work in any science, and especially physics, is done by the experimentalist, who must keep the theoreticians honest. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. Last updated Oct. 22, 1996. Copyright George Watson, Univ. of Delaware, 1996.