CIVILIZATION AND HISTORY - C.M.E.

JOAD
C.M.E. Joad in Civilization and History points out that history
books glorify only great warriors and not the makers of civilization. In the
great cities of the world we find only the statues of conquerors, generals
and soldiers. People judge a countrys greatness by the number of
conquests it had made in wars. According to him, such people and
countries cannot be regarded as civilized even if they occupy the greatest
place in the books of history.
People know all about the killers and destroyers of mankind but
they do not know about those who first set a broken leg, who made boats
for crossing the sea, who calculated the length of the year and who manure
a field. People who contributed to the development of civilization have
not been mentioned in the books of history.
If human beings also fight among themselves, they are in no way
better that the animals or savages. Even those who train people to kill
others more efficiently cannot be called civilized. Whatever the
conquerors and generals have done in the past is not a part of civilization.
Joad suggests that the civilized people find some other way of
settling their disputes. They do not believe in fighting, hurting, killing and
grabbing of lands of others.
However, according to Joad, we need not be pessimistic about the
future. If we calculate the whole past of living creatures on earth as one
hundred years, the whole past of man works out to about a month and the
whole period of human civilization comes to between seven and eight
hours. So, Joad is of the opinion that mankind is only in the infancy of
civilization, but the future is a long period of thousands of years. So, man
has plenty of time to learn more civilized ways of life. Though fighting
may not completely disappear from the face of the earth, man will learn to
spend his time and energy for constructive purposes.
****

OIL G.C. THORNLEY

In his essay Oil, G.C. Thornley has discussed on three main groups
of oils: animal, vegetable and mineral.
According to him, great quantities of animal oil come from whales.
To protect the whale from the cold of the Arctic seas, nature has provided it
with a thick covering of fat called blubber. When the whale is killed, the
blubber is stripped off and boiled down. Whales blubbers produce a great
quantity of oil which can be made into food for human consumption. There
are other sea creatures also yield oil, for example, the livers of the cod and
the halibut yield nourishing oil. These oils are given to sick children and
other invalids who need certain vitamins.
Vegetable oil which is used in cooking has been known from
antiquity. Soaps are made from vegetable and animal oils.
Modern society depends a great deal on mineral oil. Mineral oil has
several properties which make useful for a number of different purposes. As
it burns well, mineral oil is used as fuel for internal combustion engines.
Motor-cars, aeroplanes and ships use such engines. Without it, there would
be no paraffin-oil for lighting and cooking. It is also used as lubricant to
reduce friction between metal surfaces because mineral oil is very slippery.
There are four main areas of the world where deposits of oil appear:
1. The Middle East including the regions near the Caspian Sea, the
Black Sea, the Red sea and the Persian Sea.
2. The area between North and South America
3. Between Asia and Australia including the islands of Sumatra, Borneo
and Java
4. The part near the North Pole
The theory that oil originated in the sea is supported by several
facts. It was formed from living things in the sea. Countless billions of
minute sea creatures and plants lived and sank to the sea bed. They were
covered with huge deposits of mud and by processes of chemistry, pressure
and temperature were changed through long ages into mineral oil. Hence,
almost all the oil-fields of the world are near the oceans of today.

Drilling for oil is a difficult process. After geologists indicate the

places of sedimentary rocks where oil is likely to be found, the driller
sends his drill into the earth, sometimes more than a mile deep. From time
to time, samples of soil are brought up by the drill from different depths.
A chemist examines the samples to see if any traces of oil are present. If
he does not find any evidence of oil, the driller stops drilling and moves to
another place.
When the crude oil is obtained from the oil well, it is taken to the
refinery. While oil is undergone the process of heating in the refinery, the
first vapours rising from it are collected and cooled to form petrol. The
gas that is obtained next is condensed into paraffin. Finally the lubricating
oils of various grades are produced. Last of all, thick oil is left behind,
which is burnt as fuel.
*****
AN OBSERVATION AND AN EXPLANATION- DESMOND MORRIS
We may have observed a vast majority of mothers cradling their
babies in their left arms. We think that this is because of the predominance
of the right-handedness among the people. But there is a scientific reason.
The scientific explanation for mothers holding their babies on the
left side is that since the mothers heart is on the left side of her body, the
baby is soothed by the rhythm of her heart-beat. Many experiments have
proved this.
Groups of new-born babies in a hospital were exposed for a
considerable time to the recorded sound of heart-beat. When the sound
was on, the crying of the babies came down from 60% to 38% of the time.
The heart-beat group babies also gained weight by saving their energy.
In another, experiment, four groups of children were exposed
respectively to silence, recorded lullabies, a tickling metronome and the
recording of a real heart-beat. It was observed that the children of the last
group went to sleep more quickly than the others. Out of 476 paintings of
Mary and Jesus, nearly 80% showed the baby on the left breast. All these
show that the explanation is true.

Even adults, whenever they are in an uncomfortable or insecure

position, seek security and balance by this rhythmic movement. For this
reason, in folk music and dance, the rhythm is similar to the rhythm of the
heart beat.
******
A ROBOT ABOUT THE HOUSE - M.W.THRING
As civilization progresses beyond the point of supplying the basic
needs of life, we may use technology in two ways. We may use it either to
fulfill needs which are now considered unnecessary or to reduce the
number of hours of work without lowering the present standard of living.
It is quite likely that mankind will choose the latter alternative.
Housewives would like to be relieved of some of the boring
routine operations like scrubbing the floors or the bath or the cooker, or
washing the clothes or washing up or dusting or sweeping or making beds.
A domestic robot will relieve the house wife of these domestic works. This
kind of robot has no emotions but will have a memory for instructions and
a limited degree of stored-up adaptability to various positions. It will
operate other machines like the vacuum cleaner or clothes washing
machine. In a survey conducted while 90% of the house wives were eager
to have a robot, 10% were terrified by the idea. But when they become
familiar with the robot, the housewives will be very happy to know that
while they are asleep the robot has finished all routine domestic works.
It is impossible to predict the shape and mechanism of a domestic
robot. It will not at all look like a human being but rather like a box with
one large eye at the top, two arms, three hands and a pair of long narrow
pads on each side to support and move itself with. The main difficult in
making a robot is coordinating the activities of the eye and the hand. But
this problem is likely to be solved with the immense changes in the size
and reliability of computers and other electronic equipment. Another
difficulty is to make the machine move over stairs and walk on irregular
floor etc. Other general difficulties are finishing sufficient number of

applied scientists who will be interested in the project and also in getting
the money needed for making robots. But we can make a beginning by
producing robots for important purposes like saving people from burning
ships or aeroplanes and putting out oil-well fires.

tend meaning to life. The style of the story is poetic in some places and
also contains humor and satire.

*****

MAKING SURGERY SAFE - HORACE SHIPP

A Wrong Man In Workers Paradise - Rabindranath Tagore

Louis Pasteur, a French Chemist was studying why wine and beer
turned sour in their containers; Joseph Lister, an English surgeon was
trying to find out why wounds made by operations became septic and
Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor, was eager to solve the question of the
high rate of mortality among women soon after delivery. They worked
separately but came to the same conclusion that all these happened
because of germs and microbes. Their discovery saved millions of lives
and revolutionized surgery.
Simpson in the 19th century discovered anaesthetics and made
surgery painless. Lister wanted to make surgery safe and began to study
inflammations, making strange experiments with the foot of a frog or the
wing of a bat. Though other surgeons believed that surgery had reached
finality, Lister suspected that some minute organisms were responsible for
turning wounds gangrenous and killing patients. In Carbolic, he found a
substance which could destroy the organisms. The use of carbolic in
hospitals was the beginning of antiseptic surgery. When Lister introduced
his method of antiseptic surgery, there was stiff opposition to his idea,
particularly the attack was severe in the Glasgow Hospitals. But Lister
worked on and established his theory.
Dr Semmelweis, working in Vienna, also reached the conclusion
that minute organisms turned the wounds septic. But Semmelweis had to
face great persecution from the conservative elements. When he published
his ideas on antiseptics, he was criticized, laughed at and dismissed from
his post. He even became temporarily mad. But recovering, he continued
his experiments and in the course of them contracted blood-poison and
died a martyr to truth.

A Wrong Man In Workers Paradise is an enjoyable story by

Tagore. An artist who never believed in the philosophy of utility painted,
made little pieces of sculpture and wasted his time on all useless and
needless activities. After his death the aerial messenger; by mistake, led
him to the Workers Paradise where people were all utilitarians. There was
everything except leisure in Workers Paradise. The men and women in
Workers Paradise worked ceaselessly and felt proud about their restless
life. Even the torrent there was silent because it would not waste its energy
in singing.
One day a girl of the Workers Paradise saw the idler standing near
the stream. She was filled with pity and asked him if he had no work. She
also offered to give him some work if he liked. But the idle artist asked her
to give him one of her pitchers to draw pictures on it. She first refused to
give the pictures but gave the pitcher later. He painted beautiful pictures
on it. The girl admitted the beauty of the paintings. She also spent a lot of
time tying her hair with the colored ribbons made by the artist. Slowly
others also were affected by the artistic activities of the idler and began to
neglect their work. The elders were worried and they expelled the artist
from the place. To their shock, the girl also followed the artist.
Tagore pretends to make fun of the artist, but he is really attacking
the Workers Paradise and its philosophy of utility. The story presents on
opposition between happiness and beauty on the one hand and work and
utility on the other. It also conveys the moral that beauty and happiness

******

Louis Pasteur, the French chemist also demonstrated that the dust
in the air contained minute organisms which caused fermentation in wines.
Lister, Pasteur and Semmelwies discovered that hospitalism was caused
by germs and microbes. Lister and Semmelweis propagated the idea of
antiseptic which evolved into the aseptic of modern surgery. Thus, through
these three mens significant contribution to making surgery safe, mankind
has entered into new realms of health and the borderlines of death have
been pressed farther back.
*****
USING LAND WISELY - DUDLEY STAMP
Dudley Stamp says that the pressure of population on land and
land resources is the most urgent problem today. The author explains that
the world population is increasing at an alarming rate. The net increase per
annum in world population is 1.6%. The world population may reach 7000
million by the end of A.D 2000.
The enormous increase in world population is due to the spread of
the knowledge and the practice of Death control. Death control means the
conquest of diseases and the improvement in health services. Medical
examination of children at schools enables the children to become healthy.
Medical care helps to keep people alive longer. Now eighty or ninety is
taken as the normal age of man. Child mortality has been reduced and all
these causes have led to the growth of world population.
Dudley stamp says that by using the available land wisely we can
solve the food problem. He speaks about the agriculture of different
countries. Out of the total land in the world, one-fifth is too cold, covered
with ice and snow. Another one-fifth is too hot and yet another one-fifth is
too mountainous. Another one-fifth of land has insufficient soil or just
rock at the bottom. So, out of the average of 12 acres which everyone in
the world can get, only about 4 acres are suitable for cultivation. Out of
these 4 acres only a small portion is actually cultivated.
In America out of these 4 acres, nearly 3 and a half acres are used.
On that land by using scientific methods they produce surplus food.

Canada also produces more than what it requires. In England, the average
of land actually used works out to 3 acres per head. India uses only three
quarters of an acre, but even here the yield is very poor because the
methods of cultivation are primitive and unscientific. While the average
share of land per head in India is 2.5 acres, in Japan it is only 1.1 acre but
the Japanese make use of the method of intensive cultivation by which
they make the best use of every bit of land and it is possible for the
Japanese to support seven persons per acre.
Stamp says that if we make good use of fish and other sea-food the
food problem of the world can be solved to some extent. But in his view in
the matter of catching fish we are still in the Stone Age depending only
upon luck. But, of late in India and some other countries of the Far East,
fish are being cultivated in ponds and tanks. Later they are taken to the sea
where they are allowed to grow to their right size and then harvested.
Stamp feels that there is a possibility for introducing new ideas and
methods in using the sea food.
*****
THE KARBURATOR - KAREL CAPEK
Marek and Bondy are old friends who had not met each other for
twenty years. Marek is a sound physicist and Bondy, an industrialist
comes to meet Marek with the idea of buying up his invention. Marek
begins to explain elaborately the technical aspects of his invention. Bondy,
poor in physics is bored by the talk and tries to divert the conservation.
But Marek again and again comes back to the subject.
Marek has invented a device called the karburator. Marek is very
proud of his invention and calls it a bigger technical revolution than Watts
invention of the Steam Engine. The aim of the machine is to utilize atomic
energy without any residue. The principle behind the Karburator is that
electrons which are pulling in opposite directions will release enormous
quantity of energy if they are freed. The karburator consists of a gigantic
copper cylinder resting on cement supports. The karburator should be kept
in a well-protected place preferably a cellar. The room in which it is kept

should have strong, huge and thick reinforced doors like an armour-plated
safe in a bank.
Marek asks Bondy to visit the cellar and see the machine for
himself. Bondy goes down and finds the machine working with a rhythmic
regularity. Suddenly there comes a draught (current of air) and Bondy gets
a strange sensation as though his hairs are standing on end. It seems as
though he is floating in the air and he slowly is losing his consciousness
because of the poisonous gas. But Marek who suspected some danger to
his friend seizes Bondy from the cellar and pulls him to safety. Bondy
gasps and shows tremendous agitation and now feels sure that Marek is a
great scientist.
*****