Lord Dunsany said, "It is seldom that the same man knows much of science, and about the things that were known before science."

That has been my experience, and I think there is a reason for it. You can blame it on the Darwinians, and their assumption that life is always evolving into higher, more complex forms, so that what is now is better and more sophisticated than what was before.

That was brought home to me when our children pointed out to me, "This is the 80s." They said that back in the decade in which they achieved independent enlightenment, and they assumed that the progression of time had made their father's ideas and tastes irrelevant. They said, "You are still living in the 50s." By which they meant, the only people interested in what I had to say would be archaeologists.

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