“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”That quote, or something like it has been attributed to the writer George Santayana, and while it remains true as a general principle, it ignores a corollary fact: to truly “learn” from something in the past you have to recognize its application to something in the future (because the “present’ doesn’t last that long; in factit doesn’t exist) -- and humans aren’t particularly adept at predicting how the future will unfold.
Sometime in the mid 1960’s as the Apollo space program was coming into full swing, the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences commissioned a report from technical researcher Nancy T. Gamarra for the Legislative Reference Service (now called the Congressional Research Service).
Gamarra was tasked to prepare a compendium of those instances where peoples’ predictions about the future of certain scientific discoveries revealed themselves as terribly— and often humorously — misguided. The precise rationale for preparing the report is not entirely clear, but Washington Post columnist John Kelly speculates it was to rebut Congressional criticism about the financial cost of the country’s space program.
Great job up there! Sorry, but most of us felt the part about returning you to Earth was just too crazy to believe!
Titled “The Erroneous Predictions Multitith,” the 47 -page report produced by Gamarra contains some of the most obtuse mistakes ever made by noteworthy persons (and others less noteworthy) throughout history, in their quixotic, often egotistical attempts to assess the value of scientific research or technical advancements, usually by trivializing or ridiculing them. The report also includes the sources from which the quotations were obtained.
For example, regarding Edison’s development of the incandescent light bulb, the Brits were predictably snooty:
A committee of the British Parliament in 1878 reported Thomas 'Edison's ideas of developing an incandescent lamp to be "good enough for our transatlantic friends...but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men."
Source: Clarke, Arthur C Profiles of the Future. New York, Harper and Row, 1962. p. 2.
On the existence of Jupiter’s moons, some professors from the George W, Bush “Is we learning”school of astronomy, evidently, weighed in with their wisdom:
Aristotelian professors who were contemporaries of Galileo made the following pronouncement concerning this discovery:
"Jupiter's moons are invisible to the naked eye, and therefore can have no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist." Source: Williams-Ellis, Amabel. Men Who Found Out. New York,Coward-McCann, Inc., 1930. p. 4
On the novel idea of “anesthesia” for human surgery:
“No anesthesia, please. I don’t believe in it — literally.”
The famed surgeon Alfred Velpeau wrote in 1839: "The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera, It is absurd to go on seeking ittoday. 'Knife' and 'pain' are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient. To this compulsory combination we shall have to adjust ourselves."
Source: Gumpert, Martino Trail-Blazers of Science. New York, Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1936. p. 232.
Supposed military experts, explaining why an attack by aircraft could not possibly sink a ship:
U. S. Rear-Admiral Clark Woodward (1939): "..As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it."
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1922): "The day of the battleship has not passed, and it is highly unlikely that an airplane, or fleet of them, could ever successfully sink a fleet of Navy vessels under battle conditions."
Source: Woods, Ralph L. "Prophets Can Be Right and Prophets Can Be Wrong."American Legion Magazine, October 1966
(Roosevelt was doubtlessly fortunate in that there was no Internet available to “never forget” that statement during this time frame; otherwise Republicans might have transformed the attack on Pearl Harbor into his very own “Benghazi”).
Regarding the atomic bomb, this one is my particular favorite:
Adm. William Leahy told President Truman in 1945: "That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done....The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives."
Source: Truman, Harry S. Memoirs, Vol. I: Year of Decisions.Garden City, Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1955. p. 11.
It’s a good thing the admiral didn’t try to prove this point in his backyard.
In his column, Kelly cites other sterling examples from the report:
...New York Rep. Orange Ferriss couldn’t believe the United States paid Russia $7 million for the Alaska Territories. “Of what possible commercial importance can this territory be to us?” he fumed in Congress.
[*]
Writing about airplanes in the March 1904 issue of Popular Science Monthly, Octave Chanute proclaimed: “The machines will eventually be fast, they will be used in sport, but they are not to be thought of as commercial carriers.”
[*]
...Sen. Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania wondered why Congress was being asked to fund the Smithsonian Institution. “I am tired of all this thing called science here,” Cameron said.
Finally, as Kelly notes, the anti-vaccination folks we are now contending with are hardly unique to the 21st century:
“I so miss the 18th Century! Let’s go back there! ”
Edward Jenner’s attempts to use relatively harmless cowpox to prevent deadly smallpox prompted one 18th-century doctor to complain: “Smallpox is a visitation from God, but the cowpox is produced by presumptuous man; the former was what Heaven ordained, the latter is, perhaps, a daring violation of our holy religion.”
