The great space folly
Sir: In Edward de Bono's attack (29 Novem- ber) on those 'who refuse to learn the gram- mar' of technology, he denigrates everyone who is interested in sex and history. Interest in these subjects, be declares puritanically, reveals a shameful 'downward and backward orientation'.
Coming from someone who has made a special study in the science of clear thinking, these pejorative, physical epithets reveal crude and muddled reasoning. No field of study is higher, or lower, in front of, or behind another. The theologian does not, or should not, boast that his mind, or his sub- ject, is superior to the mind, or subject, of the physician.
All Mr de Bono is telling us here is that he himself has but little interest in sex and history. A man who looks only forwards, studying the future (what may be), while ignoring the past (what is), can be compared to the philistine who cannot take the trouble to read through a whole novel, and who is interested only in what happens in the last chapter.
It can easily be argued that interest in the past is 'higher' (worthier) than a study limited to the mechanical, technological plot- ting of the future. And an interest in sex, however superficial, is an interest in love and life itself. To use such terms as upward and downward in this context is irrational. Sex, like happiness in the Chinese proverb, is neither above nor below man; it is the same height as man.
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