LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]

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  • 35 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: September 20th, 2022
  • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What is a celebrated invention/discovery attributed to a single person but, had they not done it at the time, it is likely that someone else would have done it anyway not long after?English
    61·
    10 days ago

    There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.

    Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, have laboured to increase knowledge, to dissipate error, and to create that atmosphere of scientific thought, without which the marvels of our century could never have appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of poets, of scholars, of inventors, have themselves been supported by the labour of past centuries. They have been upheld and nourished through life, both physically and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen of all sorts. They have drawn their motive force from the environment.

    The genius of a Séguin, a Mayer, a Grove, has certainly done more to launch industry in new directions than all the capitalists in the world. But men of genius are themselves the children of industry as well as of science. Not until thousands of steam-engines had been working for years before all eyes, constantly transforming heat into dynamic force, and this force into sound, light, and electricity, could the insight of genius proclaim the mechanical origin and the unity of the physical forces. And if we, children of the nineteenth century, have at last grasped this idea, if we know now how to apply it, it is again because daily experience has prepared the way. The thinkers of the eighteenth century saw and declared it, but the idea remained undeveloped, because the eighteenth century had not grown up like ours, side by side with the steam-engine. Imagine the decades that might have passed while we remained in ignorance of this law, which has revolutionized modern industry, had Watt not found at Soho skilled workmen to embody his ideas in metal, bringing all the parts of his engine to perfection, so that steam, pent in a complete mechanism, and rendered more docile than a horse, more manageable than water, became at last the very soul of modern industry.

    Every machine has had the same history — a long record of sleepless nights and of poverty, of disillusions and of joys, of partial improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers, who have added to the original invention these little nothings, without which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that: every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry.

    Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle — all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present.

    By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say — This is mine, not yours?

  • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•When did Politics become "Your Thing"English
    5·
    2 months ago

    Anyone with a brain who is a member of the working class should be immediately and innately political as soon as they are exposed to even the slightest fraction of society. Everything is political, and it’s politics that dictate that they will largely work for the benefit of a vanishingly small class of parasites until they die an early death because politics also dictate that their healthcare will be unaffordable, as will their education, etc.

    If you respond with some “oh you’re just victim blaming yourself” shit like you did the other guy i’ll upgrade calling you a loser to saying you should be actively murdered