=1 "Dangerous step ahead? Yes!"

Dangerous step ahead? Yes!

There was a time in the history of the primates when the only security they could find was in the forest, and the chimpanzees remained in the forest and remained chimpanzees. But there was another ape who felt an urge, all naked and without weapons as he was, to venture out on to the wide savannahs. He started to walk upright, and thus entered an entirely new dimension of being on earth – he became man.

By renouncing the security of the forest, by renouncing his big canine teeth and even by shedding his fur, he was able to discover artificial silk, the Einstein formula, antibiotics, quasars and quarks. By renouncing the ways of his arboreal forefathers he freed his hand from climbing and developed the hand of Michaelangelo and Ravi Shankar. He became a Telstar builder. By shedding his teeth and their huge muscles he freed his brain and developed abstract intelligence: zero, logarithms, vedanta, the theory of numbers.

Let us imagine a dialogue between uncle and nephew, the arboreal uncle and the nephew eyeing the pampa, yearning for the unknown. We can hear the magnificent speech of the uncle, ringing words about our fatherland, the ways of our ancestors, the old-world culture, conservatism in all things, a speech spiked with quotations from the wise old chimpanzees of ancient times: “Remain in the trees, my children. In the tree is your security, in the tree is your food, in the tree is your home. Don't descend into the world of the rodents.” What could the nephew answer?

E=mc²?

Today mankind has many so-called statesman employing the language of the old chimpanzees, and the significance of E=mc² is as far beyond them as it is beyond the old fellow sitting in his tree.