Following up on a discussion long ago about Arthur C. Clarke's statement
"any sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic" I
think I may have stumbled across a predecessor to it in a rather strange
book by Bernard Wolfe called LIMBO. On page 49 of the first Random House
edition (1952) it states: "So this was not entirely science; it was magic
as well. Any ceremony performed in the absence of reasonable knowledge
as to cause and effect is magic." This science-fictional novel is set in
a future where either lobotomies or amputations are the norm. Anyways
.... EAJ
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"Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom
because not one word of it do I understand."
Flann O'Brien
|