It seems to demonstrate that periods of industrial activity in technical syntheses of principles, data, free energy and energy as 'matter,' find highest employment by the fear-amassed credits of warfare. Therefore the assumption approaches fact that war promotes the major technical advances of civilization... What has not been clear is that the potential of this emergency-born technology has always accrued to human's prewar individual initiatives taken in a humble but irrepressible progression of assumptions, measurements, deductions, and codifications of pure science. (1947)
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- War often drives technical advancement, but these technologies stem from humble individual scientific efforts before conflicts.
- In plain terms
- War uses tech, but the ideas come from individual scientists in peace.
- What can you take from it?
- Individual scientific progress underpins even wartime technology.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Where do new technologies really come from?
- Does war help or hurt science?
Another view
Not all technical advances come from individual initiatives; some are state-driven.
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