Comments on: Louis Palmer visits Adelaide http://teamtrev.com/2009/12/23/louis-palmer-visits-adelaide/ Trev. It's green. Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:02:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: DAVID HIGBED http://teamtrev.com/2009/12/23/louis-palmer-visits-adelaide/#comment-10 DAVID HIGBED Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:41:23 +0000 http://teamtrev.com/?p=142#comment-10 Somewhat less than a century ago, 1938 to be precise, when studying physics under Prof. Kerr Grant, our major textbook was W.S. Franklin's "General Physics", to which the author had written a foreword which went something like this- "The tragedy of science is that the man in the street sees its purpose as providing the means for him to go ever faster and further on journeys on which he has no need to go, and to speed the transmission of communication that, if their transmission were to take a hundred years, would not lose any of whatever meaning they might contain". Am I wrong in thinking that sustainability, whether of transport or any other factor involved in human existence, is better obtained by refraining from the unnecessary use of such factors than attempting to evade the inevitability of scarcity? Somewhat less than a century ago, 1938 to be precise, when studying physics under Prof. Kerr Grant, our major textbook was W.S. Franklin’s “General Physics”, to which the author had written a foreword which went something like this-

“The tragedy of science is that the man in the street sees its purpose as providing the means for him to go ever faster and further on journeys on which he has no need to go, and to speed the transmission of communication that, if their transmission were to take a hundred years, would not lose any of whatever meaning they might contain”.

Am I wrong in thinking that sustainability, whether of transport or any other factor involved in human existence, is better obtained by refraining from the unnecessary use of such factors than attempting to evade the inevitability of scarcity?

]]>