Expert: Tom Whiting - 11/30/2007

Question
QUESTION: Greetings from digital outerspace.  I am filmmaker currently working on a short
film.  I was looking for a relevant quote for the beginning of my film - which it seems I
have been doing for weeks now when I came across an author named Max Wilhelm Meyer.  The
below quote is from a book called "The End of the World".  

"Ours is not a perfect world, and therefore the old must die in order that the young,
that which is more perfect or at any rate capable of greater perfection, may live. Thus
death becomes a thing necessary and useful in the evolution of the whole; the destruction
of one celestial body contributes to the progress of the rest of the universe."

To me this quote is eloquent and profound, in other words - it's perfect. However, when I
went to research this poor fella online I couldn't find a thing.  There was a Wiki page in
German and "The End of the World" is available for reading on Google Books but
other than that I seem to have hit a dead end.  I intend to read "The End of the
World" but I wanted to make sure I wasn't quoting a Nazi or a pedophile or something.
I'm not sure who exactly to ask because I did make out something
about him being an astronomer that lived from the 1800's until the early 1900's on the
German Wiki page. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.


ANSWER: Hi Vince,
Well, I just googled Max Wilhelm Meyer at
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki
with English translation....
I personally have never heard of him.

I see no book by that title listed in the short biography on that URL....
In any case, we can automatically rule out Nazism as that
did not come into existence until the early 1930's....
as far as his social life, back in the 19th century terms
like pedophile and gay were not germane; those are modern
day concepts introduced into the late 20th century.  Besides,
we'd have no way of knowing from the distant past, because that kind of data was not recorded or stored, back then.
And since the guy is already dead, who would care anyway????

As far as the "quote" you stated,  I cannot confirm or deny it came directly from him....in any case, I'm not sure I agree
with the quote itself.  
First, destruction of a celestial body is not necessary for continued progress of the rest of the Universe.  The Universe will progress as long as their exists a quantity called "time"....and it's progress is not dependent on destruction of celestial bodies.  Of course, the Universes' progress is not deterred by it either.
I also take exception to the first part of the quote; even though it sounds "profound", upon closer examination
it tends to put down the older folk like myself, that we are
not capable of great things.  Yet, we've all made far more
mistakes in our younger life (read that as a departure from 'perfection'), as compared to our actions after say, 40 years old.  We wised up, in effect.  Actually the old do not have to
die in order for the young may live....I've read that by the
end of the 21st century, we'll be discussing human life spans
on the order of 800-1000 years....even by 2050 with medical
advances, nanotechnology, genetic manipulation and recombinations, they are talking about human lifspans of several hundred years or more.  We're on the verge of huge
increases, breaking the genetic code of aging using the human genome as a blueprint.  It's just a matter of time now.
We already have the cookbook, all we need to figure out
are the instructions.   So while that quote may sound
accurate and profound for the 19th century, and their level
of knowledge, I'm not all sure that it applies in today's
world of knowledge....that's all I'm saying.
Just my opinion,
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA


FOLLOW UP:
Oh, and BTW, if you are writing or filming about the
REAL end of the Earth, that isn't scheduled to occur until
the sun evolves to the red giant stage in about 2-3 billion
years from now....even a large asteroid impact would not
eliminate the earth.  It might destroy all life forms on the surface, but not the earth itself.  Of course, that would just
create a new round and rebirth of evolution of new life forms, assuming liquid water would still exist.
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for your answer.  I suppose taken literally the quote is severely outdated and infinitely less profound. You seem to have great faith in the abilities of man, both his ability to wrangle nature and to predict the cosmos.  I admire that.  Lastly, I would like to emphasize that I jokingly stated that I did not want to quote a Nazi or pedophile, and in fact never said one thing about homosexuality as being anywhere close to the same category.  I apologize if I gave off that impression. Thanks again.

Answer
Hi again Vince,
Oh, I care less about social conditions, homosexuality,
and stuff like that....I only watch the night sky with my
30 inch scope...I don't even get into politics very much!
So, no need to apologize....Just trying to give you an
honest answer, that's all.  (Actually, honest 'opinion'...as you never did POSE a question in your original E-mail, if you notice.)  And actually, I almost initially answered you with "There is no question
here" response. But, then I figured that you just wanted
another opinion, to help you out.

Well, I don't know about...faith in man, but I certainly
have a lot of faith in science, and from what I've been
reading in biology, (not my best science field) we seem to be on the verge of a revolution in both the aging process, and mechanization of the human body over the next 80-100 years.  They are already talking about chip insertions into the brain that will speed up the synapses, making our brains more computer speed, a million times faster than we are (think) now.
Maybe this is all just a nanotechnology pipe dream, I don't know.  But if you just look at the advances in knowledge and technology in the past 50 years, and realize Moore's Law states that everything doubles in speed every 18 months, if you project that out into the future, you'll see that we'll go exponential in about 20-30 more years.
My old computer upstairs, only 10 years old running an
AMD K6 processor at 233 MHz with dial up, is already a
"dinosaur" and the one I'm on now downstairs, is a brand
new HP Pavilion with a 2.8 Gig processor, very fast with
DSL, and yet, I know it will be a dinosaur in maybe 5 years
from now.  Things are changing faster and faster. It seems
technology begats faster technology.  I don't know if it's
all good or bad, but it definitely is happening, and in our
lifetimes.  So if this trend continues, and I see no reason
to suspect a slowdown, only a speed-up, by 2050 our descendents will think of us in 2007 as practically stone
age residents....just like we today view 19th century style of life.  Stay tuned, and hang on...it's going to get very interesting with genetic recombination, microbiology, and nanotechnology all coming together at once.
Clear skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie PA