James Burke (science historian)

"… That's all it takes to get you back to the late 18th century. Three grandfather's lifetimes. That's how close we are to it. And, yet, that world has disappeared so totally, it's like fairyland. That…"

"An invention acts rather like a trigger, because, once it's there, it changes the way things are, and that change stimulates the production of another invention, which in turn, causes change, and so o…"

"Burke's KnowledgeWeb Project"

"Television tells us everyday that we live in a world we don't understand. And yet in the main it does little to explain that world. It tells us of new products that make the products we have either ol…"

"I would say it was a pretty safe bet, that the one magic wish most people would like to be granted would be to be able to see into the future. Think what it would mean. And backing the right horse! Bu…"

"Copernicus published his manuscript in 1543 just in time for the council of Trent. So you're a church father and what this new system of Copernicus is saying is this: The Earth moves, although the Bib…"

"We expect to learn new tricks because one of our science based abilities is being able to predict. That after all is what science is about. Learning enough about how a thing works so you'll know what …"

"… Any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to collapse for an hour, for a day, or however long. That's when you find out the extent to which you are reliant on technol…"