Reply #3: I get a sense of naive optimism [View All]

From the fact that they packed 10 gallons of gasoline and 5 quarts of oil with the car in case those items were unavailable in 2007. 10 years later, in the mid '60s, people were still talking about the internal combustion engine being replaced by electric power provided by limitless nuclear sources. They were also talking about personal robot servants, a 30-hour work week, and universal adoption of the Metric System.

There was no conceivable problem that couldn't be solved through science and engineering. But the loss of that naive perception set the stage for the rise of neo-Puritanism and anti-science. In the '50s and '60s it was cool to be smart. Now too many kids grow up in subcultures that value dumbness and ignorance, providing fertile ground for backward ideas like creationism.