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Soddy, Frederick – Soddy's role as prophet - 04 Surely ... the world is doomed, if it fools with the achievements of science as it has fooled too long in the past
Identifier
024770
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Frederick Soddy: The Scientist as Prophet – Professor Mansel Davies [May 1991]
Soddy's next exposition of atomic matters came in a volume which first appeared in 1911, The Chemistry of the Radio-Elements. A second part under the same title was published in 1913. Then Part I was rewritten in 1914 and a second impression of Part II was issued in 1916. These accounts unravelled the character of the radio-elements and their isotopes.
Nothing in this description [of the isotopic character of the radio elements] necessarily implies that for all time they will remain chemically non-separable, or that someday slight differences of chemical character will not be discovered.
We need only recall the past ... to be assured that, whether it takes years or centuries, artificial transmutation and the rendering available of a supply of energy as much beyond that of fuel as the latter is beyond brute energy, will be eventually effected... It is a discovery which conceivably might be made tomorrow, in time for its development and perfection for the use or destruction of the next generation. Surely ... the world is doomed, if it fools with the achievements of science as it has fooled too long in the past.