COSMOPOLITICS III

By Lieutenant Breakfast

October 17, 2006

From: David Bryson, MD (Yale ‘ 63) aka Lieutenant Breakfast

To: Potential Participants in this Project

The great futurist and science-fiction writer H.G. Wells, who died 70 years ago, wrote, "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

My first Cosmopolitics column presents an exponential time series called "human history in a hurry." The race between education and catastrophe is now being littered with casualties. Katrina was a catastrophe. So is the mess in Mesopotamia. Polar bears in the Arctic and elephants in Africa are in rapid decline and disruption. We watch and worry as the world gets worse.

Enter education to the rescue! The intellectual content of the first 2 columns will be turned into a web-based curriculum and conversation anticipating Darwin 2009, the worldwide celebration 200 years after his birth and 150 after the publication of the Origin of Species. Focus on Darwin brings the question: Who Are We & How Did We Get Here? My panoramic pedigree from the birth of the earth to the beginning of this uncertain century (September 24 column), mixed well with the Circadian Theory of Learning (October 1 column), is cognitive cooking for global whistleblowers. Bring us on!

At this grand scale of awareness, no one is to blame. Since the onset of urban civilization, we are flying faster and faster without a flight plan. The age of the earth (5x10^9) is about a million times older than the first cities on its surface (5x10^3). If the Darwinian world could speak, it would proclaim that aliens have arrived, driving cars and dropping bombs.

The goal of this project is not peace and love, nice as that would be. The goal is produce an unbiased neutrality about who we are and how we got here - a big picture of time past with a big question mark for time future. The urge for a creation story has been universal in all cultures, and here for the first time is a creation story with a scientific basis and an exponential timeline.

Walter Smith is a professor of physics at Haverford College and the host of http://physicssongs.org . His response to Cosmopolitics: "Congratulations! Very interesting! I'll definitely pass the web address to a few friends."

From David Christian, author of "Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History" and featured in Wikipedia's "Big History". That's very neat! My instinct is that perhaps its slightly too neat, but then I'm a historian and historians are trained to be very suspicious of neat conclusions. And when I look closely I must admit that each of the turning points looks plausible to me."

Nigel Eady is Science in Society Officer for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, said by email, "I enjoyed reading your article and wish you all the best with your writing."

Please read the first 2 columns and listen to the NPR interview. A second NPR interview has been recorded and will be posted next month.

I'm now ready to hear from you directly. Email: davidbry@ktc.com

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