The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress by Gunther S. Stent

The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress Reviews

• 
  Mahmoud Awad

  Prescient philosophical discussion of whiggish historical interpretations and their outcomes. Crystalline clarity most admirable aspect of work, as author states biases and risk of appearing a "rank dilletante" in the introduction, legitimizing his philosophical antecedent with 95 pages of unrelated, fairly stupefying history of his personal scientific occupation in molecular genetics. Readers who can take the leap of faith and believe Stent to be capable of producing intellectual insight can skip directly to page 95, Chapter Four, where he elaborates on his thesis, essentially the Nietzschean view of an internal and external "will to power" driving the archetype of "Faustian Man" to achievement in science, art. As these pursuits yield diminishing returns in describing outer and inner realities, Faustian Man succumbs to a transformation into "Mozartian man"...
  ...either a transcendentalist whose creations are not intended to convey any meaning, particularly not joy [the pursuit and generation of which in Mozart's career this archetype is named after], or an epigone working in one of the traditionally semantic styles which had seen its heyday long ago. In the sciences, our future genius will be similarly engaged in activities whose significance would be unlikely to make a deep impression on Gabor or Platt. He might be working out the detailed genetic map of yet one more species of bacteria or searching for one more class of subatomic particle.
  Or he might be a social scientist who is developing yet one more subjective interpretation of data whose statistical nature puts them beyond the pale of successful theoretical formulation. He might even be collecting rock samples on Mars, in which case we could ask him, as Arthur Koestler wanted to ask Space Cadet Tom Corbett (in a quotation cited by Gabor): “Was your journey really necessary?”
• 
  Robin

  history,theory