From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 22:00:39 MDT
John Clark writes
> [Lee wrote]
> > The previous century really ended in 1715, just as
> > the 18th century itself really ended in 1815, and
> > the 19th in 1914. Because in 1715 one sun was
> > replaced by another. The outgoing sun, Sun King
> > Louis XIV, Le Etat c'est Moi, absolute ruler of
> > 25 million of the most advanced citizens of Earth's
> > richest country, died that year, and our good old
> > global-warmer itself, our real sun, came back from
> > its Maunder Minimum.
>
> Kings and solar cycles are trivial stuff compared with what happened in
> 1687, in that year Sir Isaac Newton an obnoxious unfriendly man but probably
> the greatest genius the human race has so far managed to produce published
> "Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica". The next milestone you could
> claim for Homo Sapiens was in 1800 right on the dot because that's when
> Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery making it far easy for anyone
> to experiment with electricity and magnetism. The next milestone could be
> claimed for 1900, also on the dot because that's when Plank discovered the
> quantum.
That's interesting, and does provoke speculation that as
an era draws to its close, it makes a *statement*, or
several statements as it were. You could have added
relativity to the pre-1914 fin de cycle, and the steam
engine, Wealth of Nations, and so on to the previous
fin.
But I'd bet we definitely *have* crossed over into
numerology or something related at this point ;-)
Lee
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