14

Through a G ass Darkl ly

The Half-Full Glass
Although mathematics and physics have shown us that there are things
we cannot know and feats we cannot accomplish, just because utopia is
unattainable does not mean that dystopia is inevitable. I was born in a
world just coming into the electronic age, at a time when the values cher-
ished by the Western democracies were threatened as never before and
never since, so when I look at what the world today has to offer and the
threats it presents, it seems to me that the glass is much more than half
full.
The sciences, along with their common language of mathematics, will
continue to investigate the world we know and the worlds we hypothesize.
Along with future discoveries will come future dead ends, which will also
serve to tell us more about the universe. I feel that this book would be
incomplete without some sort of summary of what we have learned about
the limitations of knowledge, but I also feel that it would be incomplete if
it did not make an attempt to foresee what the future may hold in this
area. An added reason for doing so is that it is unlikely that I will be