Once upon a time a traveler arrived in a land quite like our
own, full of modern technology like cars and computers and whistling
teapots, but with these two differences: there were no television
sets and no airplanes. In fact, nothing at all had ever been seen
in the sky, not even a bird, and the only movies the people ever saw
were in the theaters.
The traveler stayed for about a month on the eastern shore where
he had arrived, and then decided to visit the western cities. He
mentioned his decision one evening at a meeting of the principal
scientists and educators of the region, who had gathered to hear of
his travels. Someone mentioned that the west had much to offer, but
that the journey between the two areas was unpleasant, consisting of
crossing a hot, empty desert. "In that case," said the traveler,
"I'll just fly."
"Is that like sleep?" one of the scientists asked.
"No, no," the traveler replied. "You know, fly through the air,
like a bird."
"And what is a bird?" someone asked. And so the traveler began
to explain about flight and what an airplane was and how it flew from
one place to another. The room became very quiet, and the
expressions on the faces of everyone present darkened.
"Does he expect us to believe this?" one man whispered to another.
"Well, you know what liars travelers are," someone else added.
Finally the host spoke up, slightly embarrassed and slightly indignant.
"If this is your idea of a joke," he began, but was interrupted
by the surprised traveler.
"Why, it's no joke at all. People fly all the time."
"I am sorry that you so much underestimate the intelligence and
learning of your audience," said a professor across the table. "That
a person could enter some metal device--like a car with fins--and
rise into the air, and be sustained there, and move forward, why that
clearly violates everything we know about the law of gravity and the
laws of physics. If we have learned anything from a thousand years
of study of the natural world, it is that an object heavier than air
must return immediately to earth when it is tossed into the sky."
"Hear, hear," two or three people muttered.
"Now, if you perhaps mean that these 'airplanes,' as you call
them, are somehow flung into the air for a short distance and then
fall to the ground, well, then perhaps that would be possible." The
professor looked expectantly and a bit condescendingly at the
traveler, hoping that the man would take this face-saving opportunity.
"No, no. You don't understand," said the traveler. "The
airplanes have powerful motors and the craft rise into the air, and
they stay up as long as they want, as long as the fuel holds out."
There were several audible "hmmphs" around the room.
"Tell us then," said another scholar, in a saccharine voice,
"how this device works. What makes it fly?"
"Well, I don't know exactly how it works. It has something to
do with air flowing over the wings."
"You don't know--you cannot explain--how it works, this device
that runs counter to everything we know about the natural world, yet
you believe in it anyway."
"Believe in it?" asked the traveler, a bit confused by this
turn of phrase. "Of course I 'believe in it.' I fly on one all the
time at home."
"And how do you control its motions?" a man asked, without
removing his pipe. The audience was clearly beginning to patronize
the traveler, and he was growing a little irritated.
"Oh, I don't control it. There's a pilot for that."
"I see," the pipe smoker said. "So this airplane contains both
you and the pilot. You're telling us that perhaps four or five
hundred pounds of dead weight can travel through the air as long
as it wants."
"As long as the fuel holds out," added one of the hmmphers,
with amusement.
"And all the time sneering at the law of gravity and laughing
science in the face," someone else noted.
"Well, actually, the planes are much larger than that," said
the traveler. "Many of them hold two or three hundred people and
weigh, my, I don't know--many thousands of pounds."
"I think we have heard enough," the now-fully-embarrassed
and half-angered host said. "It was amusing for awhile, but it's
time to put an end to this nonsense."
"It is not nonsense," the traveler protested. "It is the truth."
"Then you really believe this madman's drivel you've been
feeding us?" the host asked, rather hotly.
"Of course. How can I not believe it? I see it and live it
every day. And here," he added, remembering something, "I even
have a photograph."
"Obviously faked," said the host, dismissing it after a glance.
"Who invited this charlatan?" someone asked of no one in particular.
"I thought science had put an end to all this miraculous event
stuff long ago," said another man, rising from his chair and
preparing to leave.
"Well, let's not pursue this pointless discussion," the
host said. "Our guest apparently knows nothing of science, and
is impervious to logic and to the considered opinion of the best
minds of our nation. There's nothing left to do but adjourn."
The meeting began to break up, and the traveler was putting on
his coat when the man with the pipe made one last attempt to
reason with him.
"We are all scientists here, all educated men. All of us
agree that it is impossible for a heavier-than-air device to
fly on its own through the air. Don't you see that? This is
against the laws of nature--it violates the law of gravity."
"Well," said the traveler, "perhaps there is another law,
or perhaps there is a higher law than the law of gravity,
which, when it is understood, will explain how planes can fly."
"That's just what I'd expect a religious fanatic to say,"
said a man who had been listening in. "Science can jump
into the trash as far as you religious types are concerned."
"Not at all," said the traveler. "But your science is not
perfect. You do not yet know everything about everything, what
is possible and what is not possible."
"Go take your religion to a church and keep it away from
serious people," the man concluded, stomping out of the room.
In the weeks that followed, the traveler was ridiculed
and denounced in the newspapers, being called everything from a
con artist to a prospective mental patient. (The scientific
journals said nothing about the man because they considered the
whole matter as beneath serious thought.) As a result, the
traveler was often left to himself, and so he pulled out his
tiny portable television set and began to watch it. Just by
chance, some visitors happened to come by and see the little
box. They were very impressed and urged the traveler to market
his invention for putting a movie inside such a small space.
In a few days, word had spread about this mini-movie and
several scientists were convinced (after some debate) to come see
it, together with some engineers representing the movie projector
manufacturers of the nation.
They were sufficiently impressed as they watched a few scenes,
but when the traveler changed channels, their enthusiasm turned to
gaping astonishment. The traveler switched all around, showing
them twenty channels in all. Such was the amazement and even
incredulity of the engineers that they already began to suspect
some kind of trick. The scientists looked confused.
"You certainly have a lot of films stored in that little
box," one of the engineers said. "How do you get them all in there?"
"The pictures are not in the box," said the traveler. "They
are all over in the air around us. This antenna brings them in
and the set makes them visible." The engineers laughed while the
scientists sneered, the latter now sorry they had allowed themselves
to be talked into coming to hear this notorious nut.
"Come now," one of the scientists said. "Do you expect us
to believe that there are pictures floating around us in the
air--pictures we cannot see? And that twenty sets of these pictures
are all present at once, scrambled together, just waiting for that
little box to take them and sort them out? What do you take us for
anyway--a bunch of gullible greenhorn fools?"
"And besides," continued an engineer, "how do these pictures
get into the air in the first place? Where do they come from?"
"They're sent from a satellite in the sky," the traveler
said, as all heads looked up. "You can't see it, of course.
It's too high. But it's there."
"And of course you expect us to believe in something we can't
see," said one of the scientists, with a touch of scorn.
"Believe it because of its effects--the results--the
evidence of its existence," the traveler said. "If it weren't
there, you would see no pictures."
"We know you're lying," another engineer said. "Even if there
were a device in the sky, held up by a balloon or whatever, it
couldn't send a signal down here without a wire. That would be
against everything we know about electricity. And I don't see
any wire."
"Well, it doesn't use a wire," said the traveler. "The
signals are sent through the air. And the satellite isn't
held up by a balloon; it stays up because it's high enough
so that gravity doesn't pull it down."
"Now he's denying the law of gravity again," said one of the
scientists. "Let's go. I've heard enough. Whatever he does to
perform his little trick, he isn't telling us about it, so let's
just leave."
"Yeah, let's get out of here," another scientist said. "Every
time we catch him in an impossibility, he tells us the explanation
is in the sky." Then turning to the traveler to say goodbye, he
added, "We cannot believe something when the weight of scientific
evidence is against it."
"But when the physical evidence is clearly before you," said
the traveler, "how can you not believe, even if your theories cannot
explain it?"
"Because such an event would be a miracle, and science has
nothing to do with miracles."
"Then perhaps science is the poorer for it," said the
traveler, sitting down to watch his television, which just then
happened to be showing a dove flying silently across the sky.