W. Norris Clarke Quotes
Uncontrolled technology can certainly bring down disaster, perhaps irreparable, on our race. The only protection against it is a growth in man's spiritual and moral maturity proportionate to his growth in technical skill and power.
W. Norris Clarke, 1815-2008, Philosopher & Roman Catholic Priest, America, September 26, 1959
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See {626813} for another quotation on this point.
Only six years later, the University was intellectually and politically split asunder when the prestigious chairman of the Geology Department wrote that the fossil record was at variance with the date the church had ascribed to Adam and Eve. Vanderbuilt was then controlled by the Tennessee Methodist Episcopal whose Bishop served as its President. See {612709} and {612831}.
Proenza was giving an explanation of why he had “blown the whistle” on the Department of Commerce over the QuickScat weather satellite. QuickScat, was the satellite that the Hurricane Center used to give early warnings about hurricanes and other tropical storms. However in 2007 it was still in service although it was only designed for a shorter period than it had already been functioning. Proenza and other scientists at NOAA reported that the satellite could fail at any time and leave the nation without an equivalent predictive tool. There had been a government plan to replace the satellite with a new one, but the cost was $400 million, but the Bush Administration had cut taxes massively and had gone from the Clinton budget surplus to the largest deficit then in American history. The administration told all senior officials that they should not tell Congress or the public that they needed any more money. When Proenza went public because he thought that people could easily die for lack of predictive capability of hurricanes, the George W, Bush administration suspended him for speaking out and not being loyal to the President and his administration. His loyalty was to the lives and safety of the American people and not to any politicians.
Born was a refugee who escaped to England from Nazi Germany.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. After the development of the atomic bomb there were great pressures on the involved scientists to downplay the dangers of nuclear weapons development. The weapons developer arm of the government was anxious not to frighten the public which might call for more oversight or even limitation of development and testing. Equally important was the scientists themselves who understood the forces that they had unleashed and were worried that if the public realized the worst of the possibilities, science and scientific research itself might be in jeopardy from a new Luddite reaction. Oppenheimer urged candor with the public. Most scientists took his advice but the Atomic Energy Commission had become politicized and when Oppenheimer went public with his and others scientific concerns they punished him by calling him a security risk and withdrawing his clearance thus cutting him off from new developments and discrediting him and his views at the same time.
Bryan participated as a prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Trial in Tennessee where a school teacher was convicted of a crime for discussing the idea of evolution in a high school classroom. He had written this for his summary to the jury, but the summaries were dispensed with when it was obvious that Scopes would be convicted. He had admitted to breaking the law, but the law itself was on trial.
William Norris Clarke was an American philosopher. He was a president of the Metaphysical Society of America.
