Inventions: Second Foundation – Rupesh Gupta

Rupesh K. Gupta (IIML)

Hi,I have been thinking abt this for a long time, but was never able to pin it down. Thanks to “serendipity” someone forwarded me the following list of inventions with the respective dates and it somehow reinforces what i have been thinking.

I think that our lifes are not what we make them out to be, but follows a more or less pre-ordained path… if not, someone sets the course every once in a while. Consider for example the spate of inventions that have happened over the last 150 years. Homo Sapiens have been in existence for over 10000 years but it was the last 150 years which saw people make real magic with science. Even considering the fact that human knowledge builds over our past mistakes, it doesnt make sense because our blundering mistakes have kept on increasing and our progress has been unprecedented.

Was it a coincidence that Jenner decided to take a vacation in the country-side inhabited mostly by “doodhwalas” where he serendipitously found a vaccine for Smallpox. Consider Alexander Fleming, in a period when the world was torn between war, plagues and lots of other deadly diseases and then all of a sudden he finds a petridish full of a wonder drug. In a more recent time, Teflon was invented serendipitously at the duPont labs when people were tying to measure properties of gases at high pressure.

I am not trying to propose a new conspiracy theory, the world has enough of those, but even serendipity doesnt seem so serendipitous. I personally do not believe in the existence of god, but I cant pass off these inventions as mere quirks of fate. These inventions/discoveries I have mentioned are but a few in the list of serendipities, but these have had a profound impact on civilization like no other. Smallpox vaccine saved millions when it seemed that the human race would be wiped out. Penicillin was the wonder drug at the time of war and teflon made possible chip fabrication plants of high precision. Each one a turning point in its own right, and each occurring when the world needed it most and each occuring all of a sudden.

On the other hand consider what has happened since the 1970’s. Forget serendipity, there hasn’t been an invention/discovery of any note that has been done by a single scientist. And most of these have been engineering marvels, its as if someone has decided that enough inventions have been made now its time to build and not invent.

Is a “second” foundation giving us a chartered ride to The Promised Land ??