FANTASTIC SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE WORLD’S FUTURE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20296, 4 May 1934, Page 6

FANTASTIC SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE WORLD’S FUTURE.

Grotesque Developments in Man and Machinery Depicted by a Visionary. The ultimate fate of this world of ours is a subject which has always fascinated scientific philosophers. Will the earth and its inhabitants end in a blaze of glory, or in an orgy of destruction, or will we peter out miserably — humanity’s achievements and sufferings nullified by the inexorable working of natural laws, asks a writer in the Melbourne “ Herald.” In his latest volume of plays Mr Shaw makes one of his characters ask of what use is life if “ the starry heavens seem no more than a senseless avalanche of lumps of stone and wisps of gas—if the destiny of man holds out no higher hope than the final extinction and annihilation of so mischievous and miserable a creature?” To such a question—a question that must occur to every thinking man and woman—science returns a hopelessly depressing answer.

JF THE IMPLICATIONS, the probabilities, inherent in our present scientific knowledge are true, if, as the anonymous author of ‘‘Creation’s Doom” (Desidirius Papp) says, the "indisputable principle that the same forces which have shaped our past will also mould our future, that the natural laws which were operative in the process of this planet millions of years ago and are so to-day, and still retain their validity during all the asons that are to come,” then science is right. Our hope lies in the fact that science may be wrong. As our knowledge increases our beliefs change and the dearly held dogmas of today become the fairy tales of to-morrow. There is no certainty that science is infallible. Secure in this belief we can face the romantically depressing future that is pictured for us so vividly in these fascinating pages. “ The whole existence of the human race from the far-off days of its gradual emergence from cave dwellers and savage hordes to the lords of creation occupies only a diminishing fraction of the time the earth has existed, for our planet is 2500 times older than the human race, even if we place its beginnings about a million years ago. which is* a sanguine estimate. “ If we want to reduce these superhuman strides of time within the Lilliputian standards of our conception, let us assume that the earth’s duration of two and a half milliard years has shrivelled to the 24 hours of an earthly day, which means that the whole earthly drama —from the dawn of creation to our age of electricity—has been enacted between one midnight and another. In that case, primitive man would not have stepped upon the world stage 34 seconds before the twelfth hour had struck, before the termination of the great spectacle and the duration of the whole of our proud civilisation would be the work of the sixth part of a single second.” The Men of the Future. But let us leave such vistas for the immediate future, a mere 100,000 years hence. How will the men of those days appear to our eyes? That they will resemble the men of to-day is undoubted. But they will be as close to us as we are to the Heidelberg man, a shaggy monster with a satanic grin, receding forehead, protruding eyebrows and powerful jaws! So this author suggests that the men and women of the future will be toothless, bald and earless, with heavy massive heads to house their powerful, greatly developed brains—a disconcerting and unpleasant prospect! Nature, however, like a tireless sculptress, never tires as she chips and chisels at her masterpiece. Our outer ears have long since lost their importance, and are even now, it seems, gradually disappearing. The same applies to our little toes, which have only two joints. The last three of our thirteen ribs are gradually fading away. As for our teeth: “ Once the chemist supplants the cook of to-day by his synthetic science and compresses the nutritive value of a rich meal in a few pills in his retorts, the hour will have come when the last languishing human teeth can disappear.” Speechless Language. On the other hand, our future descendants are likely to have learned to exploit the possibilities of the human brain: ” I he capacities now slumbering in every thought structure to whose existence the telepathic art has sufficiently testified, will long since have transformed the brain into an organic transmitter and receiver, capable without invoking the irksome assistance of the vocal chords, to express its ideas and desires. This speechless language of electromagnetic vibrations will play symphonies

to man, a fine music of the future, which will flash like lightning on the wings of the ether from mind to mind.” In the material sphere man will extend the conquest of his environment to an undreamt of extent. Aeroplanes are to be displaced by rockets which, “ driven by the force of fluid explosive substances, are able to make the complete journey from Pole to Pole in four hours.” Towns are connected by underground torpedo trains running at 500 miles an hour. Stores of energy are converted from sunlight by photo-cells into unlimited electrical power. Next, the disintegration of the atom follows and from the power so generated luxuriously fashioned space rockets enable travellers to visit the mountains of the moon, to explore Venus and Mars. Destructive Powers Increase. And man’s destructive powers increase with his knowledge. ‘‘ Powerful wireless‘currents set distant cities on fire. Security depends not least on the scorching power of the death ray, to which these invisible walls offered no check, and which rendered any conflict between war-waging nations suicidal. The ray weapon, invented for purposes of murder and destruction, proved to be the most effective protection against the horrors and futilities of war.” Mankind’s Decay. Protected by the peace secured under the threat of death man will'follow his destiny until he follows in the wake of the tyrannosaurus and the dinosaur. “ In that far-distant future the races of mankind, old and feeble like an octogenarian, will have parted with the power of reproduction. No longer will they kindle the spark of new young life at their own flagging flame. Although stellar intermeddlings may have spared man for immeasurable ages, although he may have subdued the physical forces of the earth •by his technical contrivances, and by the arts of his laboratory have penetrated to the very core of the arcanum of life he must succumb to the senility of his species, to the spermatic of man, to the barrenness of woman. “ Humanity will not be suppressed by a cosmic cataclysm. Man will not be destroved by a discordant star from the depths of space, upheaving masses of lava from the earth's interior with its gravitational attraction, or parching all living things with its rays. It will not be a world catastrophe which occurs without warning and completes its work of destruction in weeks, or even days, but the slow extinction of a senile species, the descent into death of a once virile but now feebly pulsating race.” What Will Replace Map? Aeons will pass, says this prophet, and, undisturbed by the fate of man, new species will arise. Once again earth will be replenished with a new race. Will it come from the ranks of the insects? The ants, for example, have a social organisation as complicated and more orderly than that of man. Will some super-insect develop possessing attributes unknown to man and with a bodv equal to its present muscular power and brain capacity? The termites, for instance, “ build cones 25 feet high, surmounted by huge chimneys, resembling obelisks some 10 feet high. \et the architects of these strange buildings are tiny creatures, only a few millimetres long. Given the same ratio, a man six feet tall would have to pile up sky-scrapers more than 4000 feet in altitude to produce the . same effect. In proportion to their tiny bodies their muscular power is 300 times as great as that of man.’