Robert Boyle's 17th century wishlist for future scientific breakthroughs

boing
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Telemedicine?

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None too shabby, Homo sapiens; none too shabby at all.

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I don’t know if “Malleable” = flexible
but
I feel like maybe the technology is close to the goal.

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Of course it’s possible, but as the old adage goes: cost-time-quality, pick two.

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Yes, although I suspect the way BB used ‘at a distance’ is different to the meaning we give the phrase now. I don’t know what meaning he meant (or, more relevantly, what specific problem he is referring to) but I think a straight distance=geographically_remote translation might be missing the mark.

Vaccines, for instance, work at a distance - one measured in years rather than kilometres.

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Of course, another word for “malleable” is “plastic”…

There’s a great future in malleables!

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Tiny medical robots?

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Very Hypnos/Crawling Chaos, indeed.

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Or there is fibreglass; that’s been around for yonks.

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To be sure, but what scientist would wish for Madison Avenue behavior? More likely the ‘Mad’ he was referring to was as in ‘mad as a hatter’. That phrase came from behavior exhibited by those suffering the effects of contact with mercury nitrate in beaver fur hat-making. Boyle was probably referencing observations of wired sleeplessness. And so voila, Starbucks.

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I wonder if he had this curious bit of ‘sympathetic magic’ in mind.

If so, that probably goes on the ‘nope’ list. Sympathetic magic continues to hold great appeal(looking at you homeopathy); but is…not the most fruitful…of avenues when it comes to actual scientific advances.

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“Wounds at a Distance”, sounds like a great album by the Cure.

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You forgot Hans and Lotte Hass.

You just made me smile. :slight_smile:

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25 That Robert Beschizza desist from the use of artifice to place mouths in the eyes of those folk as might incur his ire.

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Given that Boyle was long dead by the time Bessemer process steel rolled around he would probably be impressed even by the rolled homogeneous armor that was looking kind of retro by the end of WWII, never mind it’s assorted successors.

Since he specifically mentioned making glass maleable, though, he would probably be especially fond of Lexan.

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The future is malleable!

Good slogan / album name.

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