Looking Backward to 2001
Seeing this year's grade-school
graduates, Bienvenido F. Nebres, president of Xavier University, said he
was struck by the thought that these young people would be finishing college
in 2001. ``For many of us,'' Nebres wrote in last Thursday's Inquirer,
it brought back memories of the movie `Space Odyssey 2001' and the brave
new world of the computer Hal.''
Toward the end of the article,
Father Nebres spoke of the two scientific revolutions and, contrasting
the second with the first, he says that the second scientific revolution
focuses on information rather than machines and its models and images come
from the world of biology rather than physics.''
He continued, ``But this
second revolution builds on the first and so our problem is to master both
the first and the second scientific revolutions.''
``Moving through the first
and second scientific revolutions will bring shifts of paradigms and cultures,''
Nebres says -- and today's grade-school graduates ``will have to make these
shifts through the eight years they have before graduating in 2001.''
It took me a little time
to finish Father Nebres' article, because I was distracted by a stray memory
that struck me as I read the start of his third paragraph: ``I remember
how, as graduate students at Stanford in the mid-sixties...''
The stray memory was of
ten or so young graduate students discussing the movie 2001 way back in
1969.
I don't recall exactly what
we said about the movie. What I do remember is what happened when I asked,
``By the way, where did you see the movie?''
It turned out than none
of us had seen the movie in the same city. As might have been expected,
one had seen the movie in Palo Alto, right outside the Stanford campus;
another had seen it San Francisco, about 45 miles away; and still another
had seen it in Los Angeles, about 500 miles away.
``New York,'' said one.
``Chicago,'' volunteered
another.
Manila was represented --
as was Hong Kong. And three rather exotic sites: Rome, London and San Salvador
(in Central America).
The interesting thing is
every single one in that group was a Filipino.
Father Nebres, who is a
mathematician, will no doubt be scandalized by my remembering who saw the
movie where while forgetting we said about the movie, which definitely
is one of the top science fiction movies filmed so far.
I can only plead that I
remember little of the science in that movie because I have mastered neither
the first not the second scientific revolution.
Where are those ten Filipinos
who discussed that movie 24 years ago?
I've lost touch with many
of them. I doubt that half of us are here in the Philippines.
But I do not doubt that
most of us are struggling to make the shift from the first scientific revolution
to the second -- and the struggle makes me realize how much Ben Nebres
is demanding of today's grade school graduates and their teachers.