Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

prove) what I mean. But it would be tediously depressing to pile up convincing

proof-I’m not running for office. I do have proof, on file right in this room. I

started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my

“youngest” file was started in 1945.

Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by

history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn

anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another

ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

A few years ago I was visited by an astronomer, young and quite brilliant.

He claimed to be a longtime reader of my fiction and his conversation proved it. I

was telling him about a time I needed a synergistic orbit from Earth to a 24-hour

station; I told him what story it was in, he was familiar with the scene, mentioned

having read the book in grammar school.

This orbit is similar in appearance to cometary interplanet transfer but is

in fact a series of compromises in order to arrive in step with the space station;

elapsed time is an unsmooth integral not to be found in Hudson’s Manual but it can

be solved by the methods used on Siacci empiricals for atmosphere ballistics:

numerical integration.

I’m married to a woman who knows more math, history, and languages than I

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do. This should teach me humility (and sometimes does, for a few minutes). Her brain

is a great help to me professionally. I was telling this young scientist how we

obtained yards of butcher paper, then each of us worked three days, independently,

solved the problem and checked each other- then the answer disappeared into one line

of one paragraph (SPACE CADET) but the effort had been worthwhile as it controlled

what I could do dramatically in that sequence.

Doctor Whoosis said, “But why didn’t you just shove it through a computer?”

I blinked at him. Then said slowly, gently, “My dear boy-” (I don’t usually

call Ph.D.’s in hardcore sciences “My dear boy”-they impress me. But this was a

special case.)

“My dear boy . . . this was 1947.”

It took him some seconds to get it, then he blushed.

Age is not an accomplishment and youth is no sin. This young man was (is)

brilliant, skilled in mathematics, had picked German and Russian for his doctorate.

At the time I met him he seemed to lack feeling for historical span . . . but, if

true, I suspect that it began to itch him and he made up that lack either formally

or by reading. Come to think of it, much of my own knowledge of history derives not

from history courses but from history of astronomy, of war and military art, and of

mathematics, as my formal history study stopped with Alexander and resumed with

Prince Henry the Navigator. But to understand the history of those three subjects,

you must branch out into general history.

Span of time-the Decline of Education

My father never went to college. He attended high school in a southern

Missouri town of 3000+, then attended a private 2-year academy roughly analogous to

junior college today, except that it was very small- had to be; a day school, and

Missouri had no paved roads.

Here are some of the subjects he studied in backcountry 19th century

schools: Latin, Greek, physics (natural philosophy), French, geometry, algebra, 1st

year calculus, bookkeeping, American history, World history, chemistry, geology.

Twenty-eight years later I attended a much larger city high school. I took

Latin and French but Greek was not offered; I took physics and chemistry but geology

was not offered. I took geometry and algebra but calculus was not offered. I took

American history and ancient history but no comprehensive history course was

offered. Anyone wishing comprehensive history could take (each a one-year 5-hrs/wk

course) ancient history, medieval history, modern European history, and American

history-and note that the available courses ignored all of Asia, all of South

America, all of Africa except ancient Egypt, and touched Canada and Mexico solely

with respect to our wars with each.