Consider the words of Benjamin Franklin, America’s last great scientist/statesman, when he made a prediction not just about the next century but about the next thousand years. In 1780, he noted with regret that men often acted like wolves toward one another, mainly because of the grinding burden of surviving in a harsh world.

He wrote: "It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. We may perhaps learn to…