British scientist Sir Robert Boyle — remember Boyle’s Law in high school chemistry? — “seems to have envisioned airplanes, organ transplants, submarines, commercial agriculture and psychotropic drugs” in a private papers written in the 1660s. “Some wishes, such as ‘The Recovery of Youth, or at least some of the marks of it, as new Teeth, new Hair colour’d as in youth,’ seem to have come true, while others, such as ‘The Transmutation of Species,’ remain unfulfilled,” according to the Washington Post.
The papers are on public display for the first time as the centerpiece of an exhibition “The Royal Society: 350 Years of Science,” at the society’s headquarters in London. Boyle was a founder of the society.
The physicist/chemist’s envisioning reminds me of the World Book for Boys (?), copyrighted around 1915, which my grandparents bought for my uncle and my dad. I was fascinated to read about primitive versions of the same scientific advances of my time. It was like following a bread-crumb trail. One step after another step…so logical.
Bill Gates’ logic about what-next in the computer world (The Road Ahead (c) 1995) followed this kind of 1-2-3 and therefore…system. I call it the “oh, of course.”
There’s another world view, though, which is illustrated by Nicholas Negroponte’s predictions about the road ahead in Being Digital (c) 1995) When the founder of MIT’s Media Lab did imagination leaps, such as e-books that were multimedia, wi-fi computers, I got it, and moreover, I believed, with great excitement, that it would happen. I waited 15 years for it! I’ve held my breath in anticipation for nearly four years, confident that Apple would do the breakthrough.
They did and of course, I bought online immediately, and waited some more to have such a device.
I’ll bet Sir Robert Boyle did leaps of imagination, fully confident that his co-mingled wishes and logical assumptions would come to pass.