[In 1955, George Paget Thomson's book The Foreseeable Future was published by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press. This Thomson was the son of J J Thomson, discoverer of the electron. He largely followed his father's life, and became a physicist, famous for the 'two slit' experiment with particle-wave duality of the electron, for which he was made a 'Nobel Laureate'. It must have seemed likely that a physicist might predict the future. In fact Thomson is rather pedestrian, a feeling that is supported by his temporal location: after the Second World War, which he supports silently, after atomic weapons and power, and rockets to the moon and the universe, all of which he believes in, after the transistor, after electron microscopy, after some synthetic materials—but before the microchip, before the growth in plastics, before motorway networks, before audio and video processing and mobile phones.
      His foresight did not lead him away from error: he mentions Soal and Rhine as investigators in the 'paranormal'; he believed monkeys might be trained in useful work. And he had no idea that Jews had won the Second World War, and he had no prevision of the extent that science frauds would flourish.
      In Chapter II on Energy and Power, amid accounts of coal and oil (including Victorian fear about exhaustion of coal), and a 1955 White Paper Programme of Nuclear Power (no doubt a money-making fraud), Thomson mentions the First and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This reminded me of C P Snow and his Two Cultures. The text is online (I had thought it wasn't) and I have copied it here: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.]

The Two Cultures is mercifully short. The introductory idea is intended as an attack on intellectual narrowness and snobberies. It isn't entirely successful; for example, it rests on confusion between art and artists, and science and scientists. And Snow doesn't examine teaching, when regarded as a money-soaking life career. Many teachers want to be paid more and work less.

His sections (I THE TWO CULTURES,   II INTELLECTUALS AS NATURAL LUDDITES,   III THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION,   IV THE RICH AND THE POOR) promise more than the actuality reveals. The fourth part seems to have been largely ignored:- and what it says is that everyone now knows that wealth is something to be aimed at, and if we don't do for everyone, those Communists will get in there. Snow was naive about Jews, or at least would not write about them. (His shortly-after lecture, Science and Government of 1961, discusses 'Hitler War' arguments between Churchill, Lindemann, and Tizard—all recognisable as more-or-less Jewish. Note that Snow called the Second World War 'the Hitler War'). Snow seems to have had no inkling that the USSR and USA were both run by Jews—maybe the official name of the USSR was modelled on the name 'USA'—or anything similar. On Einstein, Snow explicitly stated that he had no connection with atomic weapons—which Snow uncritically believed in, and never seem to have had critical questions. Snow also mentions Auschwitz, equally uncritically.

It's saddening to reflect on the poor quality of both sides in the pillow fighting between 'art' and 'science'. While the world may be declining—Snow isn't sure, but has the extinction of Venice in mind as a dark example. Snow has no idea that Jews wanted to move away from the Med out west, with Spain, the Netherlands, Britain, and the USA as stages. Snow has no idea that China's industrialisation was rigged up by Jewish donations of USA's workers, just like Russia's, and with the aid of Jewified Japan. It's clear the 'arts' people had no idea about Shakespeare and Jane Austen. And the 'science' types were mostly working-class types, looking for careers, who never read Dickens.

Snow tries to discuss education (he has a high opinion of Soviet education!) but fails to identify the roots of creativity; he falls in with the US-Jew idea of mass production of rather gullible but apparently confident people, snowstorms of junk PhDs, and all quoting Jewish party lines.

Snow was met with some support, and a barrage of opposition of the heckling type. Oh, well; it must have helped advertise his series of novels, based roughly around the 1930s. His novels were, and presumably still are, published by Penguin. They are good in presenting views of unpercipient British people. He had no idea of the silent international Jewish Empire; no idea of forced immigration; no idea of the Jewish parts in currencies and wars. He assumed nationalism caused wars. And he was narrowed by lack of languages.

© Rae West   14 Oct 2022