part 19

180 It was not until many centuries later that people put this knowledge of geometry to wide use. The development of science had to wait until the days of Galileo and Newton. In the last three centuries our ways of living have been and are being deeply changed by science. These changes can be compared only with three or four great earlier steps in the history of human development. These are the birth of language, the use of fire and farming, and the invention of writing. Here is a horse walking round and round the mouth of a well. He is pulling on a strong stick of wood which is kept turning by his motion. This moves a chain with buckets on it. The motion of the chain carries buckets full of water up and takes empty buckets down. The horse has a cloth over his eyes to keep him from seeing that he is walking all the time in a circle. Would he stop if he knew he was going round in circles?

181 Today machines are the work horses. They are doing what people gave all their days to doing in the past. Muscles get less tired in the machine age, but they often get more tired in other ways. We are finding that we need more and more time to work out the direction that our lives may best take. We need a new design for living. People carried water from springs and rivers, and pulled it up by hand from wells, long before they learned even how to turn a chain round a wheel. They put a cord round a wheel and turned the wheel round because that was less hard work than pulling full buckets up the well by hand. The steps have come slowly because each has to be taken before the next. A next step was to put another bucket on the other end of the cord so that an empty bucket went down as the full one came up.

182 In one of the well-known Uncle Remus stories, Br'er Rabbit, a little animal who always gets the better of the other animals living near him, gets into a well-bucket... and down he goes to the bottom of the well. As his bucket goes down, the other bucket comes up empty. "How am I ever going to get back up?" he says to himself. After a while, Br'er Fox comes along, looking for Br'er Rabbit. "What are you doing down there, Br'er Rabbit?" he says, looking down into the well-hole.

183 "I'm doing a little fishing. There are hundreds of fish down here." "How can I get down there?" says Br'er Fox. "Just get in the bucket, Br'er Fox. It'll bring you down in no time," says Br'er Rabbit. And as the fox goes down ... up comes Br'er Rabbit to the top in his bucket, as he wanted to do. The two buckets go by one another on the way. "Good day, Br'er Fox, some go up and some go down. A happy landing to you," says Br'er Rabbit with a smile and a wave of the hand. Such stories about animals are as old as any inventions.

184 Here is a water wheel being turned by water power. The weight of the water falling into the buckets turns the wheel, and the wheel, in turn, turns great round stones (millstones) for crushing (milling) grain and making it into flour. Men took their grain to the miller to be made into flour. Then they took the flour away and their wives made it into bread. People did all this everywhere in the old days before the invention of steam engines and electric power.

185 Here is a windmill which does the same sort of work. The wind pushes the sails of the windmill round. The work of the windmill is dependent upon wind. When there is no wind the miller cannot make flour, because there is no power to turn the millstones round. There is an old song about a miller who lived by himself and could be heard singing a song all day long. "I care for nobody, no not I And nobody cares for me." sang the miller. What he meant was that he did not love anyone and that nobody loved him. He had no hopes or fears. He did not hope for anything or fear anyone.